Reuss, Martin

English

University of New Mexico

Volume 32 
Issue 1 Historical Analysis and Water Resources Development 
Winter 1992 
Congress in its Wisdom: Reclamation and the Public Interest Free 
Market 
Martin Reuss 
Recommended Citation 
Martin Reuss, Congress in its Wisdom: Reclamation and the Public Interest Free Market, 32 Nat. 
Resources J. 207 (1992). 
Available at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nrj/vol32/iss1/11 
This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UNM Digital Repository. It has 
been accepted for inclusion in Natural Resources Journal by an authorized editor of UNM Digital Repository. For 
more information, please contact amywinter@unm.edu, lsloane@salud.unm.edu, sarahrk@unm.edu. 
BOOK REVIEW
CONGRESS IN ITS WISDOM: THE BUREAU OF
RECLAMATION AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST
DORIS OSTRANDER DAWDY
Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. 1989.
Pp. 236. $27.95.
Doris Ostrander Dawdy is clearly outraged. Her book is a
polemic against an agency that she accuses of subterfuge and administra-
tive irresponsibility. According to Dawdy, the Bureau of Reclamation at
one time or another has knowingly subsidized the irrigation of marginal
farmlands, ignored warnings about major problems of selenium and salt
pollution, procrastinated resolving problems even after acknowledging
their existence and, in genera, abused the public trust. The author has a
mission. She wants to reform the agency.
The Bureau has had its share of critics, and some undoubtedly
share Dawdy's outrage. Certainly, there are dispassionate analysts who
agree that the Bureau has historically seemed more interested in bureau-
cratic survival than in stewardship of western water. However, Dawdy's
book adds disappointingly little to this debate. Despite the long bibliogra-
phy, the author shows little inclination to present a balanced picture. She
interprets Bureau documents in a light favoring her a priori biases, and,
despite the title of the book, which promises a thoughtful analysis of the
relationship between the Bureau and Congress, she reveals little sympa-
thy for the political juggling that shapes policy in a democratic pluralist
nation. The Bureau does not follow congressional mandate. Rather, it
"succumbs" to political pressure and "has always been subject to Interior
Department dictates" (p.84), and unsurprising fact considering the
Bureau is located within the Department of the Interior.
There are also problems of fact. One aggravation is the footnotes.
Although the author has certainly done much research in unpublished
government documents, she does not bother noting where they are
located. This discourages researchers from pursuing questions or check-
ing on the author's interpretation. Then too, supposed factual statements
that can be checked are occasionally inaccurate or misleading, partly the
result of ignoring the historical context. For instance, Dawdy refers to a
"Midwestern city" in which a conference was "quietly arranged" to
NATURAL RESOURCES JOURNAL
resolve Bureau and Corps of Engineers plans relation to Missouri River
Basin development. Actually, the meeting was neither unpublicized nor
held in some remote city. It was a meeting of the Water Conservations
Conference, consisting of representatives from many Western states, and it
was held in Chicago. In another case, Dawdy correctly notes that local
interests listed flood control along with irrigation as a justification for the
construction of Teton Dam and dismisses this as another case of exagger-
ating benefits. Actually, there was a more practical reason for exploiting
the flood control benefit. At the time, the federal government constructed
flood control dams usually at no cost to local interests except for providing
lands, easements, and rights of way. It was not uncommon, then, for west-
ern interests to claim major flood control benefits for a planned water
project even if the water was to be utilized primarily for irrigation.
Dawdy is especially distraught over the Bureau's handling of
water quality problems. Focusing on California, and particularly on the
Westlands Water District, Dawdy convincingly shows how local and state
interests subverted the Reclamation Act's promise of providing water to
encourage small-scale farming. Complicity extended to the Bureau, whose
reluctance here and elsewhere to aggressively enforce acreage limitations
underminded its major reason for existence. The ascendancy of agribusi-
ness in Westlands helped lead to the catastrophe at Kesterson National
Wildlife Refuge, where massive selenium-laden wastewater from the
farms to the evaporation ponds, without considering long-range conse-
quences (It should be pointed out that the Wildlife Refuge was an inciden-
tal by-product of the Bureau's water management plans). She accuses the
Bureau's bureaucracy of disclaiming responsibility once the extent of the
disaster was known in the mid-1980s, and for dragging its feet once
responsibility could not be denied.
In the case of Kesterson, there are probably no water suppliers or
users that are entirely blameless. Inadequate California water law, for
instance, contributed to the situation. The reluctance of users to change
their agricultural practices or to treat drainwater adequately was another
major obstacle. And while it is true that scientists have known of the dan-
gers of selenium and salt for years, and that, as Dawdy observes, "to read
the history of irrigation is to read the story of salt" (p.135), the Bureau had
no precedent to prepare it for the Kesterson disaster. With the benefit of
hindsight, it is clear that the Bureau should have paid more attention to
the calls for action coming from subordinate Fish and Wildlife Service offi-
cials, but such calls had come before at other projects, and sometimes sub-
sequent events showed the urgency was little justified.
It is a shame that the author did not apply her energy and skills
to a better balanced history. If she had, she probably would have retained
ample ammunition for her needs. The polemical style distracts readers
[Vol. 32
Winter 1992] BOOK REVIEWS 209
and undermines the author's credibility. Dawdy's writing also sorely
needs editing. Sentences are convoluted and errors occur that a good copy
editor should have caught, i.e. "conservationalists" for "conservationists"
(p. 53).
A good, comprehensive book on western water development is
still needed. Marc Reisner, Donald Worster, Robert Gottlieb, and now
Doris Ostrander Dawdy are suggestive and fill chinks in the history, but
the entire story remains largely untold and undocumented.
MARTIN REUSS
Office of History
Headquarters,
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers


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