Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water.
Cadillac Desert is a great book for anyone who wants to understand water in the west, and how we’ve created our modern water problems both in California, and in the greater Southwest region of the United States. While the book was published in 1993, the prescient issues echo today’s US water crises. Unveiling the political and economic decisions that underscore many of the choices made about water in the Southwest, helps provide a cautionary tale of the scaffolding supporting today’s water system.
Cadillac Desert was also turned into a TV documentary series that highlight four key components of water reclamation in the Southwest: Los Angeles water, the Colorado river and dams (i.e. water conservation projects), the environmental and political issues of water in CA, and water misuse around the country and the world. Below is the first episode of Cadillac Desert.