Even the Desert Will Bloom

<v Wilkinson Son>Aw as uh... If no one told me about the job, I wouldn't know about it. <v Wilkinson Son>I mean, you know, we have as much water as we need. <v Wilkinson Son>You know, I- you know I don't think it's affecting me any. <v Don Schroder>What we had here for our lawn was a very lush green lawn as of just- just <v Don Schroder>two years ago. <v Don Schroder>And last year, with the lack of using our sprinkling systems <v Don Schroder>and hand watering and we just couldn't water it enough. <v Don Schroder>And now, since we're prohibited from doing any watering whatsoever on the lawn, you can <v Don Schroder>see it's dried up entirely. And all we have left is a few weeds. <v Joy Schroder>Well, it's kind of inconvenience. I don't use the dishwasher anymore. <v Joy Schroder>Haven't for about a year now. And so we do dishes by hand. <v Joy Schroder>That saves a lot of water. Uh, I'm very worried about <v Joy Schroder>my plants that I have. I hope, I hope they can make it through. <v Speaker>[family talking] <v Jack Wilkinson> It's my understanding that the drought in northern California has been very serious in <v Jack Wilkinson>that uh, a lot of steps have been taken, no longer watering lawns and so forth and

<v Jack Wilkinson>not washing cars. And the only effect that we've seen <v Jack Wilkinson>here in Orange County is that we're not served water with our meals. <v Speaker>Tom McCall is a news commentator and environmentalist and the former <v Speaker>governor of Oregon. <v Tom McCall>Two families and two tales of the drought. <v Tom McCall>The Wilkinson family and many like them in Southern California, may not <v Tom McCall>notice the drought, but millions of others do. <v Tom McCall>For many, like the Schroeders in Marin County, north of San Francisco, the drought <v Tom McCall>has been a time not for splashing in a Jacuzzi, <v Tom McCall>but of learning to live with less water. <v Tom McCall>More than one hundred California cities have imposed mandatory <v Tom McCall>water rationing, while saving water in the home can become something of a game, <v Tom McCall>doing with less is no fun for the farmer. <v Tom McCall>Farmers use most of the water in the west about 85 percent, and so they're

<v Tom McCall>suffering most from its lack. <v Tom McCall>Farm losses in California may be in the billions of dollars. <v Tom McCall>In the northwest, low water means millions of bushels ?less wheat?, less <v Tom McCall>electricity and in some industries, fewer jobs. <v Tom McCall>Seven hundred people lost jobs in the aluminum industry alone. <v Tom McCall>Those of us who have had to cope with the drought and its effects have been <v Tom McCall>reminded anew of the basic reality of life in the West, a reality <v Tom McCall>we've done much to disguise over the years. <v Tom McCall>Ours is a desert region. <v Speaker>[music plays] <v Tom McCall>The great desert of the West has been blooming for many years.

<v Tom McCall>It blooms so long and so luxuriantly, in fact, that it took this <v Tom McCall>drought to remind us that it is indeed a desert. <v Tom McCall>Well, we've all been reminded now. <v Tom McCall>So for the next hour, we're going to see how colossal efforts to take water <v Tom McCall>from the mountains to the desert have made the desert bloom and boom. <v Tom McCall>California did it first. <v Tom McCall>Now Arizona wants to do it and wants Uncle Sam's help. <v Tom McCall>We'll take a look at the California experience and the Arizona dream. <v Tom McCall>This is also a story of federal subsidies, subsidies designed to help <v Tom McCall>family farmers in the West. <v Tom McCall>Subsidies which today often go not to the small farmer, <v Tom McCall>but to the already wealthy. <v Tom McCall>Money used not to build rural communities, but to help prosperous <v Tom McCall>Western cities grow bigger and bigger. <v Tom McCall>It's a story of the West, but it's told for you all over America.

<v Tom McCall>The federal government has invested billions of dollars in programs to nurture <v Tom McCall>cities and farms in the great American desert. <v Tom McCall>And if you live in the east, the plains states or the south, you've also <v Tom McCall>paid. And will keep on paying a big chunk of the tab. <v Speaker>[music plays] <v Tom McCall>Today, there are natural rivers that begin in the mountains and flow to the sea.

<v Tom McCall>And there are managed rivers that begin in the mountains and bump into dams. <v Tom McCall>Once the river is trapped behind the dam, mother Nature's blueprint is put aside. <v Tom McCall>The engineers take over. In California, they've taken over in a grand fashion, <v Tom McCall>capturing water in the north, carrying it through a manmade concrete <v Tom McCall>river system for four hundred forty four miles. <v Tom McCall>Much of the way uphill. <v Tom McCall>The 14 pumps here lift the water over to Tehachapi mountains. <v Tom McCall>It's a lift of almost two thousand feet, making this the most powerful high <v Tom McCall>lift pumping plant in the world. <v Tom McCall>As much power is used by this plant alone in one year as was used in 1967 <v Tom McCall>by all of Los Angeles. <v Tom McCall>And finally, the water meets the city and the city drinks. <v Tom McCall>Seventy five years ago, Los Angeles was a desert community of about one hundred thousand.

<v Tom McCall>Today, after more than a half century of importing water from distant rivers, <v Tom McCall>Los Angeles County is an oasis homeland for 9 million people. <v Tom McCall>An area once famous for orange groves is now famous for freeways. <v Tom McCall>Angelinos drive 4 million cars on 650 miles of freeways, <v Tom McCall>which lays and embrace the metropolitan area. <v Police radio>We're over now, and we're just arriving on the scene. ?inaudible? <v Police radio>to the car gonna load an injured party. <v Police radio>Looks like two vehicles involved, that's at Sunset, right at the Hollywood freeway. <v Speaker>[music]. <v Speaker> <v Evan Griffith> We must recognize that this whole southern California area <v Evan Griffith>is basically a desert. The rainfall here is normally about 13

<v Evan Griffith>inches a year, which won't support a big population like we <v Evan Griffith>have here today. So in order for the area to grow and develop. <v Evan Griffith>It's been necessary to develop and import water from the outside. <v Tom McCall>Three major aqueducts are the watery lifeline of Southern California. <v Tom McCall>The Los Angeles Aqueduct carries water 200 miles from the Sierras to urban <v Tom McCall>Los Angeles. The 242 mile Colorado River Aqueduct <v Tom McCall>brings in water, which began high in the Rockies. <v Tom McCall>The California Aqueduct transfers water from California's mountain region in the <v Tom McCall>north to the urban desert of the south. <v Jack Wilkinson>Oh, there are lots of things we do that uh, are wasteful, I'm sure. <v Jack Wilkinson>Probably this is wasteful. <v Jack Wilkinson>Allowing the water to run while brushing teeth. <v Jack Wilkinson>By allowing the water to run while shaving, I'm sure is wasteful. <v Jack Wilkinson>There are lots of things going round now as suggestions as to <v Jack Wilkinson>ways to save- to save water.

<v Jack Wilkinson>When I know that we around here, in spite of full <v Jack Wilkinson>knowledge of the- of the drought, are still watering their lawns <v Jack Wilkinson>daily, we're still wasting while washing cars, we're still splashing water outside <v Jack Wilkinson>the diffusers. [?: taking showers everyday] and taking showers every day. <v Jack Wilkinson>Uh, some of the children no longer turn on the faucet when <v Jack Wilkinson>they go to the bathroom but um [?: laughter]. <v Jack Wilkinson>So those things we would sacrifice. <v Sheri Wilkinson>My water bill here every two months, uh including my trash pickup is about $15 <v Sheri Wilkinson>twice- er every two months. <v Sheri Wilkinson>And uh, that includes the jacuzzi, uh doing uh dishwasher every day, laundry <v Sheri Wilkinson>for six of us, six showers, every single thing that we do. <v Sheri Wilkinson>So it's very minimum actually, about 7 dollars a month. <v Sheri Wilkinson>And we don't really notice it that much. <v Tom McCall>Only seven dollars a month, at that price water is probably the biggest <v Tom McCall>bargain in the Wilkinson budget. <v Tom McCall>The Schroder's in sunbaked Marin County tell a different story.

<v Tom McCall>Marin County doesn't import water. <v Tom McCall>It relies on local sources. <v Tom McCall>When the drought hit, it hit hard. <v Tom McCall>The water district set pricing policies, which meant water was no longer a bargain. <v Tom McCall>Higher prices, forced conservation. <v Tom McCall>The local water district has limited water use with its get tough policy. <v Don Schroder>Go over the quota, then you're- you are charged double, <v Don Schroder>and plus they'll disconnect the water and charge $55 for reconnecting. <v Tom McCall>Californians have spent more than three billion dollars to build the world's largest <v Tom McCall>water transfer system. For the Wilkinson's, it's working. <v Tom McCall>Reporter Mindy Cameron asked California's top water official how well he thinks <v Tom McCall>the system's working. <v Ronald Robie>-Simple, this is simply the worst drought in the history of the state, and well water <v Ronald Robie>management system is designed to provide 100 percent of your water supply during every <v Ronald Robie>year. But I think the system worked very well. <v Ronald Robie>California has grown by 15 million people since the most serious drought of the past. <v Ronald Robie>Yet we're making hardly a ripple in California, even though there are areas where

<v Ronald Robie>isolated problems are severe. <v Tom McCall>But reservoirs are dangerously low, and history tells us that drought <v Tom McCall>years come in bunches. <v Tom McCall>Already, state leaders are estimating losses from the two-year-old California drought <v Tom McCall>in the billions of dollars. <v Tom McCall>The Schroder's and their brown lawn are a stark contrast to the Wilkensons <v Tom McCall>in their Jacuzzi. The Schroders live in one of the few areas of the state <v Tom McCall>which is not hooked up to the huge state waterworks. <v Tom McCall>So they are learning to live within the limits of local water resources. <v Tom McCall>How much longer can the rest of California and the West ignore the real lesson <v Tom McCall>of the drought? Water is a limited resource, especially in <v Tom McCall>a desert region. <v Tom McCall>While the lesson goes unlearned more people throughout the country use <v Tom McCall>more and more water. <v Tom McCall>25 years ago, we took two hundred four billion gallons of our surface water every day <v Tom McCall>to use in our homes and our farms and our industries.

<v Tom McCall>Last year, we withdrew more than twice that, 420 billion gallons of <v Tom McCall>water a day to drink, wash, flush and irrigate. <v Tom McCall>That's more water than the Mississippi River carries out to sea in an entire <v Tom McCall>year. Meanwhile, with a vigor which defies the desert, <v Tom McCall>the West continues to grow faster than the rest of the country, adding each <v Tom McCall>month the population equivalent of one city of 65000 <v Tom McCall>people. Surprisingly, most of those people live in an urban area. <v Tom McCall>Only three out of every 100 Westerners live on a farm. <v Tom McCall>But those farms use most of the water. <v Tom McCall>Up to 90 percent in some areas, about 85 percent overall. <v Tom McCall>Transformed by water into rich farming country. <v Tom McCall>So one time desert land of the West has lured farmers from other parts of the country. <v Tom McCall>Men like Tollie Barton, who farms with his son near Bakersfield, California. <v Tom McCall>Back in the 1930s, Tollie Barton fought a drought and depression

<v Tom McCall>in Oklahoma. <v Tollie Barton>But then in bout the second year of the drought. <v Tollie Barton>Well, I uh, my brother and I went out on to <v Tollie Barton>farming on our own and <v Tollie Barton>we just practically lost everything that we had. <v Tollie Barton>So we gave it up and said, well, I don't believe there's any future <v Tollie Barton>here, so we'll- we'll head west, and see for this-. <v Speaker>[music: Back in 1927, I had a little farm and I called that heaven. <v Speaker>Well, the price is up and the rain come down and I hauled my crops all in the town, I got <v Speaker>the money. Bought clothes and groceries. <v Speaker>Fed kids and raised a family. <v Speaker>Rain quit and the wind got high and the black ol' dust storm filled the sky and I swapped <v Speaker>my farm for a Ford machine and I poured it full of this gasoline and I started <v Speaker>rockin n' a rollin' over the mountains out towards the ol'

<v Speaker>Peach Bowl. <v Tom McCall>More than seventy thousand square miles of land are irrigated in the west, <v Tom McCall>lumped together. That makes an area about the size of five eastern states: New York, New <v Tom McCall>Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut. <v Tom McCall>California has more irrigated land than any state. <v Tom McCall>The system which takes water to the city also takes it to the fields through a network <v Tom McCall>of smaller canals, like fingers reaching from the reservoirs to touch <v Tom McCall>the crops. <v Tollie Barton>There's no better farmland than the state of California, than <v Tollie Barton>this area- is in this area right here. <v Tollie Barton>But you've got to have that water. <v Tollie Barton>We produce about any crop and its good and <v Tollie Barton>a lot of crops, better crops than the majority <v Tollie Barton>of the state. <v Tollie Barton>How many... <v Tollie Barton>how many loads just went out general? <v Speaker>Uh we got five now. <v Tollie Barton>Five.

<v Tom McCall>But like farmers throughout the West, Tollie Barton has been plagued by <v Tom McCall>the drought. <v Tollie Barton>We just uh, hope we can survive this. <v Tollie Barton>And next year we'll have rains in the north where they will have <v Tollie Barton>more water coming down the canal. I think we've come out of it, you know, with <v Tollie Barton>at least that's our hopes and I think that's the only way we can look at it. <v Tom McCall>Farmers have always been people of hope. <v Tom McCall>For many, like Tollie Barton, farming is a family business and one of their hopes <v Tom McCall>is that the farm will prosper. Not just this season and the next, but for the next <v Tom McCall>generation as well. In 1902, Congress created the Bureau of Reclamation. <v Tom McCall>Its mission was twofold. To put farms in the arid west by bringing <v Tom McCall>water to the land and to put families on those farms. <v Tom McCall>And the bureau did succeed in creating farmland in the West. <v Tom McCall>It has built storage for enough water to flood all of New England to a depth of three <v Tom McCall>feet. The federal investment exceeds 16 billion dollars.

<v Tom McCall>But the Reclamation Act was written to assure that federal assistance went to small <v Tom McCall>farms. Hundred sixty acres or 320 for a man and wife rather <v Tom McCall>than to large holdings. In California and elsewhere in the West, it hasn't always <v Tom McCall>turned out that way, and many wonder if the family farm is still a national <v Tom McCall>goal. Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus says it is. <v Cecil D Andrus>Yes, I think it is and will continue to be. <v Cecil D Andrus>The size of that family farm might vary from area to area. <v Cecil D Andrus>But getting people back onto the land and a family unit is and <v Cecil D Andrus>will continue to be the goal. <v Mindy Cameron>Well, there are many farms-. <v Tom McCall>Some people say that goal is not being met. <v Tom McCall>Dave Weiman of AG Resources, an organization of small farmers, is one <v Tom McCall>of 'em. <v Dave Weiman>Building a project is only the means to an end. <v Dave Weiman>And the means is, is our- our physical <v Dave Weiman>features that deliver water.

<v Dave Weiman>But the end is community development. <v Dave Weiman>It's family farming. It's the spreading of- of benefits of this tremendous federal <v Dave Weiman>investment over a broad, broad base. <v Dave Weiman>That's not happening. <v Dave Weiman>Um, Westlands, perhaps, is- is a classic example. <v Tom McCall>The Westlands Water District is indeed an example of the Bureau of Reclamation, <v Tom McCall>not investing in the small family farmer. <v Tom McCall>The district in the fertile San Joaquin Valley has been described as the Mercedes <v Tom McCall>Benz of water districts. <v Tom McCall>Included on the list of owners whose land receives water supplied by the Bureau of <v Tom McCall>Reclamation are Southern Pacific Land Company 109 thousand acres. <v Tom McCall>Boston Ranch 24 thousand acres. <v Tom McCall>Standard Oil of California 11593 acres. <v Tom McCall>Hardly family farming. <v Tom McCall>The Federal Government Project in the Westlands wasn't primarily to open desert <v Tom McCall>land. The land had been farmed here for many years by pumping groundwater, <v Tom McCall>but farmers pump too much water out of the ground. <v Tom McCall>So they asked the federal government to finance a system to import surface water from the

<v Tom McCall>north, more of a rescue mission than a reclamation project. <v Tom McCall>Estimates of how much federal money will be invested in the Westlands. <v Tom McCall>By the time it is completed in 1990, run as high as two billion <v Tom McCall>dollars or more. <v Dave Weiman>Everything one would expect of a rural community that has- is so blessed <v Dave Weiman>with this kind of wealth, wealth brought to you by water. <v Dave Weiman>Uh, those elements don't exist. <v Dave Weiman>There's no 4-H clubs, there's no silos, uh, there's no McDonald's <v Dave Weiman>stands, there's no department stores. <v Dave Weiman>None of the elements of community really exist in Westlands. <v Dave Weiman>I mean, there's- there's land. There's farm workers. <v Dave Weiman>Um, it's land for as far as you can see, from north to south. <v Dave Weiman>There's no trees. It's flat as a pancake. <v Dave Weiman>Um, houses, homes. The very thing that- that were promised <v Dave Weiman>and- and- and part of the package sold in 1956, 57, <v Dave Weiman>58, 59. And the project was being promoted.

<v Dave Weiman>You know, we'll gain fine people, homes, communities. <v Dave Weiman>But we haven't gained fine people. We haven't gained any people. <v Tom McCall>No people, no homes, no communities. <v Tom McCall>Well what have we gained? <v Dave Weiman>Nothing <v Tom McCall>Ralph Brody is manager and chief counsel of Westlands Water District. <v Tom McCall>Reporter Mindy Cameron asked him if there are any family farms in the Westlands. <v Ralph Brody>Yes, there are some out there. They are not numerous but there are some, but I would <v Ralph Brody>point out that since water is first started to be delivered in Westlands, <v Ralph Brody>the average size of the farm operation out there has been cut in half. <v Ralph Brody>What was formerly operators in terms of the average size- operating unit was 46 <v Ralph Brody>hundred acres. It's now down to close to 2 thousand A-. <v Ralph Brody>Uh, the number of farm operations increased from 97 to 266, has tripled. <v Tom McCall>Brody claims that over 270 new residences have been constructed since <v Tom McCall>water began flowing in 1967.

<v Dave Weiman>I suspect some of the residences, first off, are probably farmworker housing or in some <v Dave Weiman>cases, perhaps even farmer housing. <v Dave Weiman>Um, when- when they say that the number of- of operating <v Dave Weiman>units is increased. One of the things that they probably fail to mention is, is <v Dave Weiman>that probably in 1960 or in the <v Dave Weiman>late 50s, when the project was first conceived and ultimately adopted by the Congress <v Dave Weiman>and the president at that time, there were a thousand farm units. <v Dave Weiman>What happened to those farm units? They've disappeared. <v Tom McCall>For years, Wyman and others have formed what they see as abuses of the reclamation <v Tom McCall>laws in the Westlands District, principally the failure to see that small farmers <v Tom McCall>benefit from federal projects. <v Tom McCall>Secretary Andres has ordered a review of the Westlands project. <v Tom McCall>He told reporter Mindy Cameron he suspects some irrigators in the West <v Tom McCall>are not paying enough. <v Cecil D Andrus>Hardships... Let me give you an example of one project <v Cecil D Andrus>where they're paying seven dollars and 50 cents an acre foot for the water

<v Cecil D Andrus>and some people say that's too low. <v Cecil D Andrus>I happen to agree in that particular project. <v Cecil D Andrus>When right across the fence in another project, you're paying twenty one dollars an acre <v Cecil D Andrus>foot for water. <v Mindy Cameron>Is that the Westlands Districts by the way? <v Cecil D Andrus>Yes' ma'am. <v Tom McCall>Brody says that isn't the whole story, that farmers eventually will pay more. <v Ralph Brody>He has also to to pay for a distribution system. <v Ralph Brody>There's this where you take the water to his land, he has to pay for the operation <v Ralph Brody>maintenance of the distribution system and many other items. <v Ralph Brody>The cost of water to this farmer in this district is going to be closer to $20 <v Ralph Brody>an acre foot when the project is completed. <v Tom McCall>But the project won't be completed until 1990. <v Tom McCall>Dave Wyman says that means those who benefit the most won't be around to pay the bill. <v Dave Weiman>As structured right now, payment will not begin until 1990, even though the first water <v Dave Weiman>was delivered in 1967. <v Dave Weiman>So on one hand, there's an acknowledgment of the debt. <v Dave Weiman>But the debt is deferred so far into the future that the people who organized

<v Dave Weiman>Westlands, the people who put it together politically and the first beneficiaries, <v Dave Weiman>they're not going to be around when the bill comes due. <v Tom McCall>The beneficiaries, the current owners of Westlands acreage won't be around <v Tom McCall>to pay the bill because it's assumed by then they will have complied with <v Tom McCall>federal law and sold off their land, which is in excess of 160 acres. <v Tom McCall>But regardless of who pays the bill in the Westlands, it's bound to be at bargain rates <v Tom McCall>compared to water bills. Some farmers pay in other parts of the state. <v Tom McCall>Tollie Barton gets his water from the state rather than a federal system. <v Tom McCall>He and other farmers in the same water district paid 45 dollars an acre foot. <v Tom McCall>More than twice what Westlands Water users are expected to pay thirteen <v Tom McCall>years from now. Why such a difference between water delivered by a federal project <v Tom McCall>and water delivered by a state project? <v Tom McCall>It all has to do with a federal subsidy for water development. <v Tom McCall>A subsidy provided with your tax money.

<v Tom McCall>State Water Director Ronald Robie explained. <v Ronald Robie>Federal government has a law that provides for a subsidy to agriculture. <v Ronald Robie>It does not charge interest on the money that the government uses. <v Ronald Robie>So there's first of all, there's no subsidy in the state project. <v Ronald Robie>State waters is based on sale of bonds, and those bonds all have to be repaid <v Ronald Robie>by the water users except the flood control and recreation. <v Tom McCall>Is it fair to single out the Westlands as an example of subsidized, low cost, <v Tom McCall>federally delivered water? <v Tom McCall>Is it perhaps a one of a kind discount? <v Tom McCall>Critics and defenders agree that it is not unique that the kind of subsidies <v Tom McCall>found in Westlands can be found elsewhere. <v Ralph Brody>Everything that has been suggested here as being wrong in Westlands <v Ralph Brody>is something that's been in existence for over 75 years and <v Ralph Brody>nothing has been fashioned for this district. <v Cecil D Andrus>But the Westlands is not the only place, its probably more significant because it's <v Cecil D Andrus>received more publicity. <v Tom McCall>Charles Howe is an economist who has studied the financial aspect of federal water

<v Tom McCall>projects. He explains the subsidy built in to the easy repayment <v Tom McCall>terms. No money down, no interest. <v Tom McCall>50 years to pay. <v Charles Howe>This is a rather attractive feature, as I think you'll agree. <v Charles Howe>If, if you can imagine someone offering you a 50 year loan at no interest. <v Charles Howe>One can see that this, in itself, results in a very large degree of subsidy to the <v Charles Howe>western water projects. Probably not more than 25 percent of the costs <v Charles Howe>are in fact repaid by the project beneficiaries. <v Tom McCall>The subsidy aspect of federal water development is not widely acknowledged by the Bureau <v Tom McCall>of Reclamation or the people it serves. <v Tom McCall>Charles Howe charges the agency and beneficiaries with obfuscation, <v Tom McCall>a cover up. <v Charles Howe>Very large subsidies are involved and nearly all of the federal water projects <v Charles Howe>that have been undertaken in the post-World War Two period. <v Charles Howe>Naturally, the beneficiaries and the agencies involved

<v Charles Howe>in the construction and management of these projects don't like to call <v Charles Howe>us to the public attention. <v Charles Howe>And quite frankly, this leads to an attempt to obfuscate the facts to <v Charles Howe>cover up the extent of the subsidy, failed to point <v Charles Howe>out who's getting the benefits and who's paying the costs. <v Tom McCall>So who is getting the benefit? <v Tom McCall>Who is paying the cost? <v Charles Howe>Most of the time, the benefits accrue to relatively small group of beneficiaries <v Charles Howe>who are the direct users of the water or power that comes from the projects. <v Charles Howe>Many of the costs are spread across the nation and are <v Charles Howe>borne by the taxpayers at large. <v Tom McCall>The Bureau of Reclamation today is everybody's favorite whipping boy <v Tom McCall>and there is some justification. <v Tom McCall>Critics have spoken from the White House, from Congress, from public interest groups, <v Tom McCall>echoing the views of economist Howe. <v Tom McCall>The bureau, under the guise of serving the family farmer has not

<v Tom McCall>been candid about who really benefits, who really pays for projects <v Tom McCall>like the one that delivers water to the Westlands. <v Tom McCall>In the Westlands, we find the benefits are going to large corporations <v Tom McCall>and family farming is not encouraged. <v Tom McCall>A recent study shows that one half the irrigation water used in the West is <v Tom McCall>wasted, and the bureau itself is reported that higher water rates lead <v Tom McCall>to wiser water use. <v Tom McCall>Yet throughout the West, we find the low cost of federally delivered water encouraging <v Tom McCall>waste, not conservation. <v Tom McCall>And taxpayers across the country are picking up the tab. <v Speaker>[indistinct chatter]. <v Tom McCall>Whenever a river is harnessed, something's lost. <v Tom McCall>Here on the Columbia River, the fish population is about half of what it was early this <v Tom McCall>century. The Pacific Northwest is no desert. <v Tom McCall>Drought afflicted shore, but 60 percent of all the water in the west is found here.

<v Tom McCall>Yet even here, people have discovered that water is not unlimited. <v Tom McCall>Hydroelectric power came to the northwest on a large scale 40 years ago. <v Tom McCall>It was good for the economic growth and the prosperity of the region. <v Tom McCall>But it wasn't so good for the fish. <v Bill Luch>They come to Bonneville Dam and from Bonneville on up it's every 50 miles a dam. <v Bill Luch>With very little moving water in between, just the tail water of the dam itself. <v Bill Luch>And the situation then becomes these fish get into these, into these lakes. <v Bill Luch>They get lost. They spend too much time. <v Bill Luch>They are, have problems getting over the ladders. <v Bill Luch>And they get- they get bruised, and they get hurt and, and parasites <v Bill Luch>take hold, the fish get diseases. <v Tom McCall>Fish runs on the Columbia River declined from the early days of dam building <v Tom McCall>until about 1960. <v Tom McCall>Since then, there has been a slight reversal of the trend. <v Tom McCall>But Bill Lou, a longshoreman from Portland, who is president of a national fishermen's

<v Tom McCall>organization, isn't optimistic about the future of Northwest fisheries. <v Tom McCall>He says there will be trouble when hatchery-reared fish replace the wild <v Tom McCall>fish. <v Bill Luch>You know, man doesn't fool with those wild fish. They do their own thing on their own. <v Bill Luch>And, and uh, they're the key to our fisheries. <v Bill Luch>Because if you have a catastrophe at a hatchery, a disease catastrophe, you lose every <v Bill Luch>fish in the hatchary. Where do you go to replenish your stocks? <v Bill Luch>You must go to the wild fish. <v Bill Luch>When you don't have those wild fish, then you're in a lot of trouble. <v Tom McCall>For most, though, development of the Columbia River doesn't mean trouble. <v Tom McCall>It means jobs, growth, a healthy economy. <v Tom McCall>The Bonneville Power Administration, a federal agency, was created in the 1930s. <v Tom McCall>Bonneville Dam was the first of some 30 power dams, which today make <v Tom McCall>the Columbia the greatest power producing river in the country, with tentacles reaching <v Tom McCall>as far as Southern California. <v Tom McCall>Their surplus water from the northwest, helps to make the desert bloom,

<v Tom McCall>water transformed into energy and transmitted more than eight hundred fifty miles <v Tom McCall>helps to run the pumps that take water to Southern California cities. <v Tom McCall>The Northwest Hydro power is cheap power, cheap enough to lure industry, <v Tom McCall>particularly the metals industry, which has more than tripled in the last 20 years. <v Tom McCall>Hydro electric power in the northwest has been particularly important to the <v Tom McCall>aluminum industry. Energy intensive aluminum plants use more than <v Tom McCall>18 percent of all the electricity sold by Bonneville Power Administration. <v Tom McCall>Jim Vann is manager of an Alcoa plant in Vancouver, Washington. <v Jim Vann>Well, this is the first plant that was built in the northwest and we came <v Jim Vann>here strictly because of economical power was available from the Columbia <v Jim Vann>River system or the federal dam system. <v Jim Vann>And that has continued to be the case, actually, until last year <v Jim Vann>when Bonneville gave their notice of insufficiency.

<v Tom McCall>Notice of insufficiency? <v Tom McCall>Yes. Not enough water, not enough power. <v Tom McCall>And the notice came one year before the drought lowered flows on the Columbia, <v Tom McCall>even in the Pacific Northwest with more than half of all the water in the west. <v Tom McCall>Water is a limited resource. <v Tom McCall>Water experts gave warnings more than a year ago that the mighty Columbia <v Tom McCall>couldn't do it all. <v Jim Vann>Without a source of electrical energy the, the <v Jim Vann>industry would have to leave the northwest, but I don't think that, that's a very <v Jim Vann>practical alternative, because with 30 percent of the production up here, it <v Jim Vann>would be a rather drastic effect to have a rather drastic <v Jim Vann>effect on the national economy. <v Tom McCall>Leaving the northwest may not be a practical alternative for the aluminum industry. <v Tom McCall>But staying there is going to be costly. <v Jim Vann>But we would expect our power costs to triple between now and 1980. <v Jim Vann>And uh, I would say by 1990, our power cost compared

<v Jim Vann>to our present rate would probably be up nine <v Jim Vann>hundred percent. <v Tom McCall>A nine hundred percent increase? <v Tom McCall>Consumers are sure to feel the impact when buying aluminum products. <v Tom McCall>Since the industry uses more than 10 percent of its sales revenue to pay the <v Tom McCall>electric bill. BPA deputy director Ray Forelin confirms <v Tom McCall>that power costs will skyrocket in the northwest as nuclear power begins <v Tom McCall>to meet the growing demands that hydro power can no longer serve. <v Ray Forelin>Prices are gonna go up. Because right now, our hydro system, the federal hydro system, <v Ray Forelin>produces power on the average at about 2 mills a kilowatt hour, <v Ray Forelin>very, very low price. Wholesale power cost, these new thermal plants coming in <v Ray Forelin>in the mid 80s, for example, the cost of those projects are probably going to run 25 to <v Ray Forelin>30 mils. In other words, the cost is going to be fifteen times- <v Ray Forelin>potentially 15 times higher.

<v Tom McCall>So the era of low cost hydroelectric power is ending in the northwest, <v Tom McCall>but demands for power are not ending. <v Tom McCall>The Bonneville Power Administration and the Northwest utilities say that meeting those <v Tom McCall>demands will require the construction of as many as 13 new coal <v Tom McCall>or nuclear power plants in the next decade. <v Tom McCall>Hydro power is cheap. <v Tom McCall>Nuclear power is not. This changing energy picture of the northwest <v Tom McCall>has not been brought on by the drought alone. <v Tom McCall>It's been brought about primarily by people in industry and their ever growing <v Tom McCall>demands for power. <v Tom McCall>Just as growth changed Southern California from a desert to a water importing <v Tom McCall>metropolis. So growth may change the northwest from a low <v Tom McCall>cost hydro power economy to a region powered by nuclear <v Tom McCall>power. We've seen demands for more, more water, <v Tom McCall>more energy, but there are some people today who are demanding less. <v Tom McCall>Mike Owen is one of them. Mike and his son Eric are fishermen, one of their

<v Tom McCall>favorite spots is the South Fork of the Platte River, not far from Denver. <v Tom McCall>The Bureau of Reclamation has a plan to dam the stream because Denver <v Tom McCall>wants more water. <v Mike Owen>It's too bad. I left that six X in the car. <v Mike Owen>You don't need it. <v Eric Owen>Yea. <v Eric Owen>How much of the four X do you want me to take off the tip? <v Mike Owen>Only take off about a foot. You're about right ?inaudible? <v Mike Owen>It's really been a thrill for me to have Eric with me and to teach <v Mike Owen>him how to fish and to see how much he's enjoyed it. <v Mike Owen>He's always bugging me. <v Mike Owen>Daddy, come on. When are we going into the mountains? <v Mike Owen>I want to go camping. I want to go fishing. <v Mike Owen>It's really meant a lot to our family to be able to do those types of things. <v Mike Owen>And I want to make sure that we can continue to do it. <v Mike Owen>That's why I'm working so hard.

<v Mike Owen>Try to save a stream like the South Platt. [In the rougher water. <v Mike Owen>And I think you'll be able to take some.] <v Mike Owen>This stream is probably the best fishing within a <v Mike Owen>70 mile radius of Denver. <v Mike Owen>Gets a lot of pressure. In fact, it gets more efficient pressure than any stream in the <v Mike Owen>state. And there's a proposal right now to have the Bureau of Reclamation <v Mike Owen>build a dam. It's called the Two Forks Dam. <v Mike Owen>That would inundate about 35 miles of the stream. <v Mike Owen>Really take the heart out of the most popular stretch of the river. <v Mindy Cameron>Mike, what's the purpose for building the Two Forks Dam? <v Mike Owen>It's to provide water for future growth of metropolitan Denver. <v Mike Owen>And actually this is perhaps a bigger issue than the damming of a trout stream itself <v Mike Owen>because a great many people in Denver are pretty well convinced

<v Mike Owen>that Denver, if anything, is too big already. <v Mike Owen>I lived on the East Coast most of my life. <v Mike Owen>And the thing that really drew me to the Denver area was the quality of the environment. <v Mike Owen>And many other people come here for the very same reason. <v Mike Owen>And yet here we are talking about trying to develop, trying to get bigger and bigger all <v Mike Owen>the time. And we're just destroying the very thing that brought us <v Mike Owen>here. <v Mike Owen>That's quite a fish Eric. <v Eric Owen>There's one down there further... ?inaudible? you just hear bloop, ?inaudible? <v Mike Owen>I don't know how many times I- I've gotten into arguments with some of my friends <v Mike Owen>who were very much development oriented <v Mike Owen>because it's so easy for them to think of the many dollars that can <v Mike Owen>be made, how the economy can flourish. <v Mike Owen>And what happens is pretty soon they'll all feel <v Mike Owen>that they'll have to move to Montana or somewhere else to find the same quality

<v Mike Owen>that we enjoy here today. <v Mike Owen>I think in the 15 years I've been here, I've seen a definite decline. <v Mike Owen>And if it goes too much further, I'm going to have to <v Mike Owen>look for another place. You can't keep running. <v Mike Owen>Sooner or later, all the nice places are developed and, and the quality <v Mike Owen>of life is, is ruined. <v Mike Owen>Because of what we do to our environment, we won't have any more places <v Mike Owen>to go. <v Tom McCall>We've asked a lot of our water in the West. <v Tom McCall>We've hauled it great distances to make cities flourish in the desert. <v Tom McCall>We've poured them out the fields to grow crops instead of cactus. <v Tom McCall>We spilled it through our turbines so we can light our homes and run our factories. <v Tom McCall>We damn it. We fish it. <v Tom McCall>We ski it. We drink it. We flush it. <v Tom McCall>The only thing we don't do very well is save it. <v Tom McCall>How long can we keep it up? <v Tom McCall>President Carter has called for reforms in water use after the president tried

<v Tom McCall>to scrap 19 water development projects. <v Tom McCall>Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus explained the new administration's action <v Tom McCall>to water experts at a national conference in St. Louis. <v Cecil D Andrus>Water is a finite resource. <v Cecil D Andrus>And what the government can do to deliver it where it is needed <v Cecil D Andrus>is also finite. <v Cecil D Andrus>It is essential... <v Tom McCall>But in the West tradition prevails. <v Tom McCall>Governor Dick Lamm of Colorado has been a spokesman for Western political leaders <v Tom McCall>who criticized the president's action. <v Dick Lamm>Very mistaken to start and take projects that were already authorized, in some <v Dick Lamm>cases have been in the minds and hearts and hopes of people since 1904. <v Dick Lamm>And simply with a flick of the pen, you know, say that they no longer exist, especially <v Dick Lamm>if they've been authorized by Congress and millions of dollars have been spent <v Dick Lamm>appropriating it. <v Cecil D Andrus>In my way of thinking, this is somewhat like after choosing the route <v Cecil D Andrus>you're going to take to cross the street. <v Cecil D Andrus>You close your eyes until you get to the other curb.

<v Cecil D Andrus>Well I don't plan to operate with my eyes closed. <v Cecil D Andrus>Any decision made at any time by government should be open to scrutiny, <v Cecil D Andrus>and we have to be willing to change our minds and change our course <v Cecil D Andrus>of action if we see that a mistake has been made or is being made. <v Tom McCall>Change is slow to come, especially when the wheels are already turning to perpetuate <v Tom McCall>the old remedy. In central Arizona, the largest single Bureau <v Tom McCall>of Reclamation project ever authorized is now under construction. <v Tom McCall>It will import water from the Colorado River to the parched and thirsty southwest, <v Tom McCall>one of the fastest growing regions of the country. <v Tom McCall>The Central Arizona project will cost more than 2 billion dollars.

<v Tom McCall>It will bring water from the Colorado River more than 200 miles across the desert <v Tom McCall>to Phoenix and Tucson. No new farms will be created, but it will <v Tom McCall>provide additional water to existing farms and to municipal water users <v Tom McCall>in central Arizona. Why is this two billion dollar project necessary? <v Tom McCall>Because Arizona has overused its natural underground water supply. <v Tom McCall>The Central Arizona project is a rescue mission. <v Tom McCall>Representative Morris Udall, a supporter of the project explains. <v Rep. Morris Udall>The thing that people don't understand about Arizona, is that we are living on borrowed <v Rep. Morris Udall>water. It took hundreds of millions of years to put this water underground. <v Rep. Morris Udall>And every year we're drawing three times out what Mother Nature is putting back <v Rep. Morris Udall>in. The central Arizona project just fills part of that void. <v Rep. Morris Udall>It doesn't uh, replenish the bank account. <v Rep. Morris Udall>It just fills part of the overdraft. <v Tom McCall>Arizona has overdrawn its water account. <v Tom McCall>REPORTER Mindy Cameron talked with project critic George Barr a Tucson Engineer, <v Tom McCall>and he says the solution is not more water but proper water management.

<v George Barr>There are virtually no laws governing the use of water, and <v George Barr>it's just first come, first serve for almost everything in the state. <v George Barr>And which means that that water, water doesn't have any cost itself. <v George Barr>Whoever is advantageously located and can take that <v George Barr>water and doesn't have to, doesn't have to take out it only as much as, <v George Barr>as goes into the ground in that location. <v George Barr>You can take out whatever you can afford to take out by pumping. <v George Barr>And therefore... <v Tom McCall>Despite overuse of the groundwater, in Arizona, it is still every <v Tom McCall>man for himself. Unlike neighboring western states, Arizona <v Tom McCall>has failed to enact laws to regulate the use of its underground water resources. <v Tom McCall>Wes Steiner director of the Arizona Water Commission says better water <v Tom McCall>management and conservation are not the whole answer. <v Wes Steiner>These are, are important, but they, they would fall far short <v Wes Steiner>of, of fully meeting the water problem in the state of Arizona.

<v Wes Steiner>We need better management, but we also need more water. <v Wes Steiner>The consumption by the average homeowner in Arizona is uh, is Overlook- <v Wes Steiner>is above the average nationally. <v Wes Steiner>But you've got to remember that in a good part of this country, you don't have to <v Wes Steiner>irrigate your yards. You don't have the same, the same <v Wes Steiner>demands for swimming pools and this sort of thing. <v Tom McCall>Arizona's people do indeed use more water than many others and <v Tom McCall>they like to show it off. <v Tom McCall>This fountain shooting out of a manmade lake in the center of a new desert community <v Tom McCall>is touted as the world's highest fountain. <v Tom McCall>Promoters say it sends water 560 feet into the air, higher than <v Tom McCall>the Washington Monument. <v Tom McCall>Per capita water consumption in the Phoenix area has been as much as 50 percent greater <v Tom McCall>than the national average. <v Tom McCall>The Central Arizona project, first authorized primarily to aid irrigators,

<v Tom McCall>now is designed for urban residents. <v Tom McCall>A promise to them that they may continue their present lifestyle and then more <v Tom McCall>people may come to share their good life. <v Tom McCall>Keith Higginson Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation comments. <v Keith Higginson>They see the Colorado River as their last opportunity for resource, water <v Keith Higginson>resource development. And the reclamation program here is bringing <v Keith Higginson>the water from Colorado into central Arizona to take care of their continued growth <v Keith Higginson>and expansion in the central Arizona Phoenix Tucson area <v Keith Higginson>and to develop resources for their future growth. <v Tom McCall>So the federal government is investing in the growth and expansion of Phoenix and Tucson, <v Tom McCall>a region which already has grown beyond the limits of its water. <v Tom McCall>The project is another rescue mission on the heels of shortsighted resource <v Tom McCall>management, and it is for cities instead of farms. <v Tom McCall>The key to making this rescue mission a success.

<v Tom McCall>Is the Colorado River. The most important question in Arizona today is, <v Tom McCall>is there enough water in the Colorado? <v George Barr>It isn't there now. By the time the CHP is completed, there <v George Barr>probably will be no water in <v George Barr>the river. It'll just be whatever... <v Tom McCall>The water just won't be there because the Colorado River is used up. <v Tom McCall>Western states with claims to the Colorado River have waged long court battles <v Tom McCall>over rights to develop the river's water. <v Tom McCall>The Arizona versus California case was one of the longest ever heard by the Supreme <v Tom McCall>Court. But most experts believe the states have overestimated <v Tom McCall>just how much water is in the river. <v Tom McCall>Courts can grant rights, but they can't create water. <v Tom McCall>And courts have divvied up more water than exists in the Colorado. <v Tom McCall>That's not bad for states who won their water rights first. <v Tom McCall>But Arizona was last, and so it has last call on the river. <v Tom McCall>Currently, California is using some of the water that Arizona can claim

<v Tom McCall>when the project is finished. Supporters count on that water to make the project work. <v Tom McCall>George Barr says that's expecting too much. <v George Barr>California has to give it up, but that doesn't necessarily mean Arizona will get it <v George Barr>because those, there are many the priority over that Arizona on that water. <v George Barr>All of the affirmation, for example. <v George Barr>And that guy will go to the Colorado projects, not to the Arizona projects. <v Tom McCall>The state of Colorado has priority over Arizona, so water <v Tom McCall>development plans there are of critical importance to Arizona. <v Tom McCall>Governor Dick Lamm says Colorado's share of the river will be developed. <v Tom McCall>If the public sector doesn't do it, then the private sector will. <v Dick Lamm>Basically, if these projects aren't put to use for agricultural projects, <v Dick Lamm>they are going to be put to use- somebody is going to build those dams anyway. <v Dick Lamm>Somebody is going to be make use of the remaining use of Colorado's water. <v Dick Lamm>And I'm afraid that if they're not built now under very intense public purposes, they're <v Dick Lamm>going to be built sometime in the future for private purposes.

<v Tom McCall>So the Colorado River is going to be used up before it ever gets to Arizona. <v Tom McCall>Opponents of the project have another argument. <v Tom McCall>They raised the familiar question, who really benefits? <v Tom McCall>A spokesman for one citizen group says the large corporations will. <v Tom McCall>Barbara Tellman gives an example of how a large landowner in the Phoenix area <v Tom McCall>might benefit. <v Barbara Tellman>He owns a large piece of land that he would like to develop into subdivisions. <v Barbara Tellman>The only way he can do this is if he has CAP water. <v Barbara Tellman>His land value will go up tremendously. <v Barbara Tellman>Now he can build a subdivision with the promise of C.A.P water, if it doesn't ever come <v Barbara Tellman>through. He hasn't lost anything. <v Barbara Tellman>He's made his millions and he's left the people with the houses to find a source of <v Barbara Tellman>water. <v Tom McCall>A large landowner making it gourd off a federal water development project. <v Tom McCall>It's a familiar charge. <v Tom McCall>We saw how it happened in the Westlands in California. <v Tom McCall>But there's more to the Westlands CAP connection. <v Tom McCall>Dave Weiman explains.

<v Dave Weiman>That when scrutiny was attached to some of these projects, we found out that <v Dave Weiman>there were some common names on the benefit columns. <v Dave Weiman>In fact, some of the landowners in Westlands also owned land in the CAP <v Dave Weiman>area. Interestingly enough, there's at least one individual, and that's <v Dave Weiman>J.G. Boswell, who owns the Boston Ranch Company with about 20 some odd thousand <v Dave Weiman>acres in Westlands. Boswell is also in the central Arizona project. <v Tom McCall>Fact, the J.G. Boswell Company owns three thousand acres which stand <v Tom McCall>to benefit from the project. <v Tom McCall>Part of Sun City, a retirement community in the sun drenched desert west of Phoenix, <v Tom McCall>is on land once owned by Boswell. <v Tom McCall>Boswell is currently involved in another 300 million dollar housing venture. <v Tom McCall>Arizona landowners like Boswell will be able to get Project Water for agricultural <v Tom McCall>purposes and convert it to urban uses when they decide to cash <v Tom McCall>in crops for shopping centers. <v Tom McCall>Land reclaimed with federal dollars is a good investment, but in more than just <v Tom McCall>a few isolated instances, it's not the ordinary farmer whose investment is

<v Tom McCall>aided by federal reclamation programs. <v Tom McCall>It's business investors, large landowners, large corporations. <v Tom McCall>Does all this really matter? <v Tom McCall>It's repaid to the federal Treasury eventually isn't it? <v Tom McCall>Well, project proponents like to think so. <v Keith Higginson>Agricultural landowners and beneficiaries pay up to their capacity <v Keith Higginson>to repay the costs of the project. <v Keith Higginson>And then all of the costs that they cannot repay directly themselves are paid by the <v Keith Higginson>power revenues from the projects themselves. <v Dick Lamm>Reclamation over the years has returned far more money than we've even spent <v Dick Lamm>upon it. <v Speaker>We're not asking to give away. We're asking a loan which is paid back <v Speaker>much of it with interest. <v Tom McCall>Two economics professors at the University of Arizona calculated the interest <v Tom McCall>on that loan. They found an effective interest rate of less than 2 percent. <v Tom McCall>If Arizonans were to take out a loan at more realistic interest rates, the professors <v Tom McCall>discovered, watercourse would have to be four times what they will

<v Tom McCall>be with the federal financing that in order to repay the loan. <v Tom McCall>The project may not be a giveaway, but it's certainly the easiest terms <v Tom McCall>around. Let's look now at the whole picture. <v Tom McCall>According to its own figures, the bureau will spend sixteen point two billion <v Tom McCall>dollars to complete projects now under construction. <v Tom McCall>So far, it has spent almost eight billion dollars on those projects. <v Tom McCall>But water users have repaid only one point six billion or 20 percent. <v Tom McCall>And the gap is widening each year as investment leaps ahead of repayment. <v Tom McCall>Even if the bureau would stop spending money 20 years ago, only half the <v Tom McCall>investment would have been returned today. <v Tom McCall>Some of the money spent by the bureau about 15 percent is for flood control <v Tom McCall>and recreation. This will not be repaid because it's assumed the <v Tom McCall>benefits are spread evenly among the people. <v Tom McCall>But 85 percent of the investment directly benefits specific groups.

<v Tom McCall>Westlands farmers, Phoenix residents, they're supposed to repay. <v Tom McCall>But the repayment period is so long and at such low interest rates, irrigators <v Tom McCall>pay no interest. That for practical purposes, the bureau has <v Tom McCall>all but given its money away. <v Tom McCall>If the bureau had charged even a 6 percent interest rate, the interest alone <v Tom McCall>since 1957 would have been more than five billion dollars and soon <v Tom McCall>would exceed the actual capital investment. <v Tom McCall>This interest not paid is the subsidy that taxpayers provide to those <v Tom McCall>who benefit from Bureau of Reclamation Projects. <v Tom McCall>Barber Conable, the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, <v Tom McCall>represents some fertile eastern farmland in upstate New York. <v Tom McCall>He's voted against many Western water projects. <v Tom McCall>He says his constituents have helped to pay for projects in the West, which create <v Tom McCall>competition for New Yorkers.

<v Rep. Barber Conable>We've lost a lot of food processing to California and parts of the Sunbelt. <v Rep. Barber Conable>In the past, this created specific economic problems for us. <v Rep. Barber Conable>I don't think the federal treasury should be used to benefit one area at the expense <v Rep. Barber Conable>of another. <v Rep. Barber Conable>I think the projects have the strong odor of park <v Rep. Barber Conable>about them anyway. <v Rep. Barber Conable>We have tremendous regional blockades that try to <v Rep. Barber Conable>set these projects up, um, usually at <v Rep. Barber Conable>considerable expense, and it is somewhat questionable benefit. <v Tom McCall>It's an old argument. A dog-eared argument as far as many Westerners are <v Tom McCall>concerned, for overall subsidies and hard work helped <v Tom McCall>build the west and the whole nation is stronger for it. <v Tom McCall>In their march to prosperity, Westerners have truly made the desert <v Tom McCall>bloom. California did it first and showed us what could be <v Tom McCall>done. Then came the drought and its message.

<v Tom McCall>Water in the West is a limited resource. <v Tom McCall>We can make better use of the water we get or we can, in the tradition <v Tom McCall>of the West, go out and get more water. <v Tom McCall>And that's just what an engineering firm in Pasadena would like to do. <v Tom McCall>First proposed more than 10 years ago. <v Tom McCall>The Parsons' plan is getting renewed attention in this drought year. <v Tom McCall>Here in a film prepared in the 1960s is the company's explanation <v Tom McCall>of the North American Water and Power Alliance. <v Speaker>The water problem has traditionally been considered a local or regional problem, <v Speaker>but it is not local or regional. <v Speaker>It is a continental problem which requires a solution on a scale that is <v Speaker>also continental. <v Speaker>This motion picture is about the North American Water and Power Alliance. <v Speaker>NAWAPA.

<v Tom McCall>NAWAPA has active support today. <v Tom McCall>Dr. Nathan Snyder is chief scientist of the Ralph M Parsons Company. <v Tom McCall>He described to reporter Mindy Cameron, the scope of the NAWAPA scheme in comparison <v Tom McCall>to another big Alaska project. <v Tom McCall>The Alaskan pipeline. <v Dr. Nathan Snyder>It's much larger than the Alaska pipeline, which cost the order of <v Dr. Nathan Snyder>eight billion dollars. We're talking about well over 200 billion dollars. <v Dr. Nathan Snyder>There are going to be hundreds of dams and many, many tunnels, <v Dr. Nathan Snyder>many canals. They'll be canals, natural waterways and large tunnels. <v Dr. Nathan Snyder>Some of the tunnels will be of the order of 80 feet in diameter <v Dr. Nathan Snyder>through mountains. And there may be several of them. <v Dr. Nathan Snyder>The canals and rivers may be of the order of <v Dr. Nathan Snyder>several hundred feet across. <v Tom McCall>200 billion dollars. <v Tom McCall>Hundreds of dams, tunnels through mountains.

<v Tom McCall>Well, it just boggles the mind. <v Tom McCall>NAWAPA is an extreme solution. <v Tom McCall>Now there's another kind of answer. Way down at the other end of the scale. <v Tom McCall>Let's take our minds off the continental solution and focus on one <v Tom McCall>small backyard. <v Tom McCall>We've heard Don and Joy Schroeder talk about doing with less. <v Tom McCall>And here's how they're doing it. <v Don Schroder>The center question tank is uh, a hundred and fifty gallon wine <v Don Schroder>barrel and it's at a low center. <v Don Schroder>So they need to drain systems that we now have it's all collected at that point. <v Don Schroder>When joy washes the- we take the water rather than, having it going <v Don Schroder>into the sewer pipe, I set another drain system and then <v Don Schroder>another pump there takes that wash water that we collect from the wash and <v Don Schroder>pumps around through the hose and to one of our drain lines. <v Don Schroder>And then this drain line empties into the 150 gallon wine barrel, <v Don Schroder>which has the sump pump. And then from there, the storage facility on the hill.

<v Don Schroder>And our use of this water then is for the flushing purposes in <v Don Schroder>the household and for what watering can do with our plants. <v Cecil D Andrus>We have learned another important lesson from this drought that is <v Cecil D Andrus>that people can when they try, live with considerably <v Cecil D Andrus>less water than what they've been accustomed to. <v Cecil D Andrus>Now, I do not suggest that everyone should cut back to the level of those <v Cecil D Andrus>unfortunate people suffering under a meager ration of water. <v Cecil D Andrus>But their experience does point up the fact that the quantity of <v Cecil D Andrus>water used by most Americans includes a great deal, which is <v Cecil D Andrus>in excess of the basic essential supply <v Cecil D Andrus>and also a great deal of waste. <v Tom McCall>Yes, indeed, a great deal of waste. <v Tom McCall>We waste water because it's there, plenty of it. <v Tom McCall>Brought to us across mountains and desert. <v Tom McCall>We waste it because it's cheap.

<v Tom McCall>Forecasters tell us we'll be using 33 percent more water by the year 2000. <v Tom McCall>And in the same breath, they tell us the nation is short of water right now. <v Tom McCall>How are we going to keep from drinking ourselves dry? <v Tom McCall>Same old approaches. <v Tom McCall>That means continuing to grow without regard for the limits of our water. <v Tom McCall>It means spending tax dollars, dollars to develop water resources, only to find <v Tom McCall>out later that that big guy, not the little guy, makes good. <v Tom McCall>It means bailing out bad water management with more water. <v Tom McCall>More water from where? <v Tom McCall>Alaska, an iceberg from the North Pole. <v Tom McCall>The truth is we're engaged in a battle around a shrinking water hole. <v Tom McCall>What's happened to the Colorado River is an example of what can happen all <v Tom McCall>over the arid west. <v Tom McCall>And the drought tells us what it will be like when the water is all used up. <v Tom McCall>One of these days, we ought to take careful measure over our water

<v Tom McCall>hole, then measure our real water needs and somehow <v Tom McCall>try to make them match. <v Speaker>But you can't handle it.

<v Speaker>Oh, I can handle it.