Here’s a look at Hoover Dam’s past, present and future, from Michael Hiltzik writing for The Arizona Republic. Click through and read the whole article. Here’s an excerpt:
The promise of abundant water and power took the brakes off the growth of Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix and many other Western cities; it encouraged farmers to complacently plant the most water-thirsty crops; and it gave us city dwellers the impression that we can water our lawns every day without worrying about waste and runoff.
Yet the world Hoover Dam made is now facing the era of limits. There isn’t enough water in the Colorado to serve all the demands we place on the river, and there never was. This was evident to some people, like the great Western explorer John Wesley Powell, who at an irrigation congress in 1893 announced, “Gentlemen, you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not sufficient water to supply the land.”
Nor did the project assauge all the mutual suspicions that had raged for decades in the seven states of the Colorado basin. What [President Franklin Roosevelt] glossed over in his dedication speech was that only six of the seven basin states had signed the 1922 interstate treaty that enabled the dam to be built. Arizona, whose seven-term governor, George Hunt, was convinced the project was a plot by California to steal its water, had refused to ratify – and would not fall into line until 1944.
More Colorado River Basin coverage here.