THE WATER AND THE POWER

An analysis of the past, present and future mismanagement and management of water supplies and conservation based on a study of the major trends and developments of the five major Western Rivers -- the Colorado, the Sacramento and San Joaquin, the Rio Grande, the Missouri, and the Columbia's Ourigan. The taming and exploiting of the first, the international implications and individual treatment of the third, the national implications of the fourth and the total, overall picture that although Valley control is the present answer, it is not the final solution to water power questions. In the telling, there is the picture of reclamation projects, of irrigation and flood control, of the necessity of harnessing the resources above the hills in the river basins, of the tributary waters and of the multiple purposes of water usage which now demands regional and/or national treatment rather than state. There is the history of the great dams -- Boulder, Bonneville, Grand Coulee, Big T, etc. -- the complicated political battles, the discriminatory practices, the probabilities of the Pick-Sloan, watershed erosion, flood control systems. As a concentration of information on current emergency, this emphasizes the national good, large scale thinking, and the total assimilation of water resources into one federal organism -- for a public yet to be alerted.