Cadillac Desert_ The American West and Its Disappearing Water - Marc Reisner [193]
That particular dam—a $400 million structure intended to store Colorado River water shipped over in the Granite Reef Aqueduct, and to hold back the occasional flood surge—was one of the main topics of conversation in 1980. On February 27, just after the biggest flood hit, the Arizona Republic ran a huge editorial that read, “Are you fed up sitting in traffic, creeping to work, because floods have taken out all but two of the major bridges crossing the Salt River? Are you fed up with reading stories about a new study and more hearings into whether construction of Orme Dam would interrupt the nesting habits of bald eagles ... of this community playing second fiddle to high-and-dry special pleaders who shed tears over nesting eagles, but can’t find compassion for the thousands of families who endure hardship, fear, and ruin as flood waters rampage through the valley?
“I’m mad!” continued the editorial, which was signed by the Republic’s editor-in-chief, Patrick Murphy. “I’m mad as hell that high-and-dry Washington bureaucrats have been dilly-dallying for at least ten years over approval of Orme Dam.... Now, dammit, give us our dam!”
The “special pleaders” Murphy referred to numbered among them the Yavapai Indians, whose remnant population of three hundred or so lives on a reservation near the confluence of the Salt and Verde rivers, and who would lose their homes to the reservoir. The Yavapai, who appear to be some of the most peaceful, sweet-natured souls on earth—many of them are old and still weave baskets for a living—had won a lot of well-placed sympathy, which was apparently what Murphy was complaining about. Cecil Andrus, then the outgoing Secretary of the Interior—and someone who spent a good part of his term trying to stop the Bureau from carrying out its plans—vowed that the tribe would be relocated over his dead body, and one local attorney who was preparing to fight Orme Dam on their behalf was Stewart Udall—the man who, as much as anyone, had made the CAP and Orme Dam possible. (In later years, Udall, unlike the Bureau, was to rue much of what he said and did in the 1960s; he even spoke at a testimonial dinner, in 1982, celebrating the seventieth birthday of his old nemesis, David Brower.) The dam was in the news so often that one could almost imagine the dancers in the bars debating the pros and cons between acts. What was most striking about the debate, however, was that practically no one seemed to be asking the more fundamental question about Orme Dam. As a $400 million flood-control structure, it made little economic sense; it would be much cheaper to move the relatively few threatened structures and reinforce the bridges. Only if it received and stored a substantial amount of Colorado River water—which implied not only a decent flow in the river but a demand for the water, and an ability to pay for it—did Orme Dam make any sense. Would the water arrive, and arrive predictably and often enough, and be economical enough, so that anyone would want to buy it?
In 1980, one of the few people in the state who seemed to be asking this question was William Martin, an economist at the University of Arizona at Tucson. For having done so, and answering negatively, Martin had been accused in local newspapers of being a paid agent of California, where he was born. The dean of his department denied