Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

The focus of Chapter 11 is on dams that the Bureau built or desired to build in recent decades on sites that had known geologic problems, but the agency still built them since there were few “good places [left] to erect its dams” (379). Due to the Reclamation Act amendments, there was still demand for dams; however, the Bureau only had sites left that it had rejected years earlier. The agency rationalized these construction projects by claiming technological advances were making them possible. Reisner emphasizes how unlikely this was since the Bureau was “building dams on rotten foundation rock, between spongy sandstone abutments, in slide-prone canyons, and close to active earthquake faults” (383).

The first example is Fontenelle Dam, located on the Green River in southwestern Wyoming, which the Bureau built in the 1960s. It sprang a leak in 1965, but engineers were able to save it. The dam’s construction was economically senseless. However, it was politically a rewarding decision since locals wanted the dam.

The second example is Teton Dam, built on the Teton River in Idaho, which experienced catastrophic failure. Since the 1920s, there were discussions about building a dam in this location, but there were two drawbacks to the site: geology and the farmland’s copious water requirements.