Lake Mead, a reservoir outside Las Vegas serving 40 million
people in Nevada, Arizona, Southern California, and Northern Mexico, was at its
lowest level (i.e., below 1,080 feet) in April 2015 since it was formed with
the Hoover Dam.[1] Particularly
for California, whose snow-melt would again be minimal, the continued draught
was quickly turning dire. With a surplus of rain-water coming down on western
Washington and Oregon, the U.S. Government could have dusted off FDR’s Civilian
Conservation Corps (CCC) to activate the long-term unemployed (and the
imprisoned) to assist the Army’s Corps of Engineers in constructing aqueducts
and digging canals that would hook up with the extant canals running from the
delta area north of Sacramento to southern California. It is not as though the
Oregonians and Washingtonians would miss the water, and the Californian farmers
could see to it that their best produce finds itself up north. Yet as easy as
such a large-scale governmental project seems, the devil is in the details,
which can actually be rather huge in themselves. China provides a useful case
study that the Americans could, conceivably at least, benefit from—should they
endeavor on a truly large-scale governmental project.
The full essay is at “The
Southwest Drought and China.”
[1]
Reuters, “Lake Mead on Track for Record Low Water Level Amid Drought,” The
Huffington Post, April 24, 2015.
