Dear HCN,
In your coverage of the
Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission’s report (HCN,
6/22/98) I was struck by a quote attributed to Denise Fort,
chairman of the Advisory Commission: “The traditional control of
Western water has largely been federal because the federal
government has had such a major role in the construction of water
projects’ (HCN, 6/22/98).
To the contrary, many
water rights and many water-users in the West trace their origins
back to an era in which the federal government held relatively
little influence.
Specifically, the federal
Mining Act of 1866 – championed by California gold mining interests
dependent upon “hydraulicking’ – granted enormous power over water
allocation to local, territorial and state authorities, even on
public lands owned by the federal government. And after the U.S.
Reclamation Service was authorized in 1902, it struggled in a
political environment in which issues related to water rights were
firmly separated from federal control.
As
historian Don Pisani of the University of Oklahoma notes, the
constitutionality of federal involvement in Western water projects
was very much in question during the first decades of the 20th
century. Prior to the New Deal there always loomed the possibility
that federal participation in this sphere of activity would be
curtailed on constitutional grounds. In this context, I find it
significant that legal justification for allowing the federal
government to build Hoover (a.k.a. Boulder) Dam – as determined by
the 1931 U.S. Supreme Court ruling stemming from Arizona’s
strenuous objection to the project – rested first and foremost on
the navigability of the lower Colorado River and thus drew upon
early 19th-century precedents (Gibbon vs. Ogden, 1823) bearing
little relevance to actual Western water
practice.
Why? Because “traditional” federal
involvement in the region’s water development could not support
such an intrusion into an arena previously dominated by non-federal
authorities and interests. I might also add that some of the most
adamant congressional opposition to San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy
project in 1913 did not derive from wilderness protection or
concern for the integrity of Yosemite National Park; rather, it
resulted from a belief that federal legislation had no business
stipulating how water flow was to be divided between San Francisco
and irrigation districts in Modesto and
Turlock.
A second point regards Ed Marston’s
engaging description of Richard Ingebretson’s visit to High Country
News’ board meeting to discuss initiatives to remove Glen Canyon
Dam. His column notes that “Reclamation is associated with
Mormonism, and members of the LDS Church are a disproportionately
large part of BuRec’s workforce.” I have come across this assertion
in other contexts. I am not necessarily disagreeing with this
claim, but before embracing it as gospel I would be interested in
seeing some validating statistics.
Lest someone
wonder why I might wish to raise the above point, I direct them to
the introduction of the book Cadillac Desert where author Marc
Resiner makes the bold (rash?) assertion that “(in 1902) the United
States government launched its own irrigation program, based on
Mormon experience, guided by Mormon laws, run largely by Mormons.”
Based upon extensive research I have undertaken into Reclamation
Service records, the notion that the early Reclamation Service was
“run largely by Mormons’ lacks foundation.
Before
taking on faith that Mormons constitute a “disproportionately
large” number of BuRec staff members, I would counsel that the
issue remain in question until some statistics are presented to
back up the claim.
Donald C.
Jackson
Easton,
Pennsylvania
The writer teaches history at Lafayette College.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Water, the feds, and Mormons, too.
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