The Dammed - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 159

ational users, environmentalists—and the Bureau was caught in the cross fire. As the
seventies wore into the eighties, President Carter, faced with a global energy crisis set
of by the Iranian revolution of 1979, began to curtail the number and scope of the Bur-
eau's projects. By the end of the 1980s, the Bureau was subject to major downsizing and
reorganization.
In 1993, Reclamation had almost eight thousand employees ; by 1996 it had shed
nearly two thousand workers, and its annual budget was slimmed down to $772 million.
The Water Buffaloes who had engineered and built more than six hundred dams and
reservoirs throughout the West in the twentieth century had essentially been turned in-
to caretakers, devoted to the operation and maintenance of about 476 dams, plus canals
and hydroelectric facilities.
In 2008, the Bureau of Reclamation was the largest wholesaler of water in the coun-
try , providing water to 31 million people, including 140,000 farmers who irrigated 10
million acres of land that produced 60 percent of the nation's vegetables and 25 percent
of its fruit and nut crop. The Bureau generated $1 billion a year in revenues operating
fifty-eight hydroelectric plants that provided 40 billion kilowatt-hours of energy for 6
million homes.
Shrunk and repurposed, the Bureau nevertheless declared victory: “ he arid West
has essentially been reclaimed ,” an agency statement read. “The major rivers have been
harnessed and facilities are in place or are being completed to meet the most pressing
current water demands and those of the immediate future.”
“BUCKETS”: A CALIFORNIA WATER FIGHT
In 2000, the World Bank , a backer of dam projects worldwide, joined the World Conser-
vation Union, a protester of dam projects worldwide, to publish a definitive and unpre-
cedented study of large-scale dams. Their joint report concluded that dams have made
a significant contribution to human development and have led to considerable benefits,
but too often these advances come at “an unacceptable and often unnecessary” price.
Dams ruin forests and fisheries, have displaced as many as 80 million people around the
world over the last century, and often fail to achieve their objectives for irrigation, flood
control, or hydropower, the report concluded.
By the time the report was issued, the antidam crusade had grown so loud and ef-
fective in the United States that dam building had dramatically slowed. Governor Sch-
warzenegger liked to complain that one reason California's “water system is extremely
vulnerable … [is] we haven't built any dams in thirty years . ”