Cadillac Dessert Analysis

I have a friend from Southern California, and she told me she did not even know we were in a drought. When she said that I was shocked, I thought how could she possibly not know? After reading the chapter China Town, in the book Cadillac Dessert by Marc Reisner, I finally got my answer. How could she have known there was a drought when almost all the water in California gets pumped down to the heavily populated desert area. The chapter begins with some background. The author states that California is essentially a semidesert, and most of this state gets less than twenty one inches a year in precipitation. Most of this precipitation comes from Northern California, due to the zone of high pressure. The author stated it the best when he said, …show more content…
This would control the dams and reservoirs in California, but the Bureau of Reclamation eventually took over this act. Once they took over they decided to create four massive dams, spanning eighteen years in the making. Agriculture was still on the rise, especially when the land redistribution device was made, which allowed farmland to dispose and subsidized water. There were many commercial companies that used this method, some of these companies include: the DiGiorgio Corporation, the Wetland Water District, Standard Oil, J. G. Boswell Ranch Company, and many others; all of these companies owned tens of thousands of acres. A new law came out that stated all landholders with more than one hundred and sixty acres need to be sold, but many farmers did not follow this idea for it would take away land and money. This was unacceptable for people to disobey the Bureau of Reclamation, so Ralph O. Baird decided to hunt each and every person down who was not following the rules set; he was able to find a total of ninety nine people who were not obeying the provisions set in …show more content…
There were many major companies that had large stakes in the business of water; and these companies ran the state and where all its resources went. It was soon decided that more water should go to Southern California. This water would be sold to LA and then stored in the groundwater basin. From there, water channels were widened and levees were build to help bring the water to where it was thought to be necessary. This was necessary if they wanted California to continue to grow in the way it was. This stirred up problems with the central valley farmers, due to the fact that they would no longer have excess water for agriculture. Next, Brown wanted to send even more water to Southern California, because people will move there anyways; and by 2010 it is said that almost five million acres were used for domestic water