Border Oasis: Water and the Political Ecology of the Colorado River Delta, 1940-1975, and: Fuel for Growth: Water and Arizona's Urban Environment (review)

The University of Arizona Press has brought out two additions to the substantial literature on western water history. Evan Ward, in Border Oasis, and Douglas Kupel, in Fuel for Growth, both explore the relationship between water-resources development and economic growth. Both contribute to our understanding of water-resources development in the post-World War II period. Beyond these broad similarities, however, these are very different kinds of books. Ward's slim volume is ambitious in its conceptualization, and weaves together Mexican, American, diplomatic, and environmental history in its discussion of the development of the Colorado River Delta. Kupel's is a straightforward narrative of urban water development in Arizona, focusing on Tucson, Phoenix, and Flagstaff.

Ward builds Border Oasis around the story of U.S. allocation of Colorado River water to Mexico between 1944 and 1974. The Colorado River Compact, which split the river's resources between U.S. basin states in the 1920s, set the stage for development of the Colorado River in the United States with Hoover Dam, the All American Canal, Glen Canyon Dam, and the Central Arizona Project, to name only the largest and most well-known projects. It intentionally excluded Mexico. The U.S.-Mexican negotiations over this resource began with the Mexican Water Treaty of 1944, which guaranteed Mexico 1.5 million acre-feet of Colorado River water annually and provided for Morelos Dam to store and divert the water. By the early 1960s, salt levels in the water were so high that irrigation was killing crops in the Mexicali Valley along the California border, and the United States and Mexico began discussing water quality as well as quantity.

In 1965, Minute 218, an amendment to the 1944 treaty, addressed the issue but did not solve the problem. Runoff from recently expanded irrigation in Arizona's Wellton-Mohawk Valley contributed significantly to high salt levels in Colorado River water. Under Minute 218, the United States would build a bypass so that the Mexicans could choose whether to accept this water; the United States, however, would still count the runoff toward its delivery obligations. Minute 242, adopted in 1974, provided a more substantial solution. The United States agreed to build a desalination plant to treat Wellton-Mohawk runoff, to build a drainage channel directly to the Gulf of California for plant by-products, and to provide technical and financial assistance in rehabilitating Mexican farmlands damaged by salt.

Despite the complexity of the region's political and environmental history, Ward presents a clear and illuminating argument. He weaves together a narrative of politics on a number of levels among "four identifiable political entities dealing with each other: the U.S. government; the American West, composed of a linkage between western legislators and the USBR [Bureau of Reclamation]; the Mexican government; and local organizers in the Mexicali Valley" (p. 86). Examining history from several perspectives makes a rich tale. For example, Ward describes the proposal for Minute 242 made by Richard Nixon's special ambassador, Herbert Brownell, in the context of how western leaders, industry, and, in the immediate delta area, farmers, town governments, and native peoples shaped the agreement to meet their own needs.

Ward also provides an episodic but compelling view of environmental change as a result of water development though a series of "Deltascapes." These vignettes follow each chapter and provide narratives about encounters with the river. They range from an account of Cocopah communities by a Spanish governor of California from the 1790s to a short reflection on the "mirage culture" of Las Vegas that celebrates water in displays large and small—at the expense of destroying natural waterscapes.

Fuel for Growth examines the development of Arizona's...