Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West Review

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Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West ReviewDonald Worster's "Rivers of Empire" is a superb work by the environmental historian, though his critique of California's "hydraulic society" is more a social history. Worster chronicles the exploits of the agribusinessmen and engineers who financed and built the system of damns, reservoirs, and canals which transformed the American West from a sparsely inhabited desert to the site of massive fertile farms and sprawling urban metropolises. Worster argues that the control of scarce water resources gave rise to a symbiotic capitalist/bureaucratic elite and to a modern day empire like its ancient predecessors on the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Huang Ho. This imperial elite, in turn, established and perpetuated itself on the backs of impoverished wage laborers usually of minority or immigrant descent. As an environmentalist, he rails against the wanton waste of water for swimming pools, casino fountains, and ill-suited crops like alfalfa, the depletion of aquifers, and the salinization of rivers - all byproducts of the US government's ambitious 20th century reclamation projects. Worster points out the vengeance of nature in the form of the sedimentation and collapse of dozens of dams. He suggests that these processes and events presage the decay of a socio-economic system which long ago forsook the more harmonious ideals of agrarianism and democracy. This doomsday prediction and Worster's idealistic alternatives are a bit hard to stomach. Also, for all of Worster's sympathy for the underclass of farm laborers, this group never emerges as a real actor in his story. Rather, this is a history of great men, albeit a critical one. Nevertheless, Worster writes with passion; his narrative is fascinating and his contentions are compelling. The book is a fine counterpoint for fans of Marc Reisner's "Cadillac Desert," and an extremely worthwhile read on its own.Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West OverviewWhen Henry David Thoreau went for his daily walk, he would consult his instincts on which direction to follow.More often than not his inner compass pointed west or southwest."The future lies that way to me," he explained, "and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side." In his own imaginative way, Thoreau was imitating the countless young pioneers, prospectors, and entrepreneurs who were zealously following Horace Greeley's famous advice to "go west."Yet while the epic chapter in American history opened by these adventurous men and women is filled with stories of frontier hardship, we rarely think of one of their greatest problems--the lack of water resources.And the same difficulty that made life so troublesome for early settlers remains one of the most pressing concerns in the western states of the late-twentieth century. The American West, blessed with an abundance of earth and sky but cursed with a scarcity of life's most fundamental need, has long dreamed of harnessing all its rivers to produce unlimited wealth and power.In Rivers of Empire, award-winning historian Donald Worster tells the story of this dream and its outcome.He shows how, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Mormons were the first attempting to make that dream a reality, damming and diverting rivers to irrigate their land.He follows this intriguing history through the 1930s, when the federal government built hundreds of dams on every major western river, thereby laying the foundation for the cities and farms, money and power of today's West.Yet while these cities have become paradigms of modern American urban centers, and the farms successful high-tech enterprises, Worster reminds us that the costs have been extremely high.Along with the wealth has come massive ecological damage, a redistribution of power to bureaucratic and economic elites, and a class conflict still on the upswing.As a result, the future of this "hydraulic West" is increasingly uncertain, as water continues to be a scarce resource, inadequate to the demand, and declining in quality. Rivers of Empire represents a radically new vision of the American West and its historical significance.Showing how ecological change is inextricably intertwined with social evolution, and reevaluating the old mythic and celebratory approach to the development of the West, Worster offers the most probing, critical analysis of the region to date.He shows how the vast region encompassing our western states, while founded essentially as colonies, have since become the true seat of the American "Empire."How this imperial West rose out of desert, how it altered the course of nature there, and what it has meant for Thoreau's (and our own) mythic search for freedom and the American Dream, are the central themes of this eloquent and thought-provoking story--a story that begins and ends with water.

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