Cadillac Desert_ The American West and Its Disappearing Water - Marc Reisner [215]
As expected, Reagan’s original proposals were slowly nibbled away by Congress, but meanwhile, year after year, no new authorization bills managed to clear the floor—partly because the federal government was suffocating under its own mass, but also because Reagan, like Carter, was threatening to veto. In 1984, the entire $20 billion water-projects authorization in the public-works bill—three hundred projects’ worth—was taken out due to such a threat. A year later, when an almost identical bill reached the floor of the House, environmentalists, who had formed a discreet alliance with Stockman and other fiscal conservatives in the administration, had managed to sneak in amendments and conditions requiring local cost-sharing on the order of 10 to 30 percent—even for flood control. If the amendments and conditions stayed in the bill, only a handful might get built; when a state sees that it has to put up $50 million toward construction of a dam, its enthusiasm is apt to wilt like a plucked blossom. As for the Bureau, one of its largest projects, Central Utah, had been burdened with a supplemental repayment contract that absolutely guarantees recovery of all costs before the CUP receives any further funding. That provision, which could stop the project dead in its tracks, also had Reagan’s private blessing. No one could predict how much of this would remain in this or successive bills when they cleared Congress and reached the President’s desk—and the Tellico experience led some to think, not much—but the pork barrel seemed finally to have lost its anchorings, and to be adrift on the very thing it helped produce: an uncontrollable tide of national debt.
CHAPTER TEN
Chinatown
Everyone knows there is a desert somewhere in California, but many people believe it is off in some remote corner of the state—the Mojave Desert, Palm Springs, the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. But inhabited California, most of it, is, by strict definition, a semidesert. Los Angeles is drier than Beirut; Sacramento is as dry as the Sahel; San Francisco is just slightly rainier than Chihuahua. About 65 percent of the state receives under twenty inches of precipitation a year. California, which fools visitors into believing it is “lush,” is a beautiful fraud.
California is the only state in America with a truly seasonal rainfall pattern—stone-dry for a good part of the year, wet during the rest. Arizona is much drier overall, but has two distinct rainy seasons. Nevada is the driest state, but rain may come at any time of year. If you had to choose among three places to try to grow a tomato relying on rainfall alone, South Dakota, West Texas, or California, you would be wise to choose South Dakota or West Texas, because it rains in the summer there. California summers are mercilessly dry. In San Francisco, average rainfall in May is four-tenths of an inch. In June, a tenth of an inch. In July, none. In August, none. In September, a fifth of an inch. In October, an inch. Then it receives eighteen inches between November and March, and for half the year looks splendidly green. The reason for all this is the Pacific high, one of the most bewildering and yet persistent meteorological phenomena on earth—a huge immobile zone of high pressure that shoves virtually all precipitation toward the north, until it begins slipping southward to Mexico in October, only to move back up the coast in late March. More than any other thing, the Pacific high has written the social and economic history of California.
Actually, San Francisco looks green all year long, if one ignores