![]() Indeed, metropolitan Los Angeles could not support a fraction of its current population without imported water, which today accounts for nearly three-quarters of supply. Water is a more valuable commodity in some respects than oil - or it will be over time.” 2 As Zev Yaroslavsky, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, put it: “Water is probably the single most vexing issue that we have in … places like Southern California, because it’s in such short supply. Although Lieutenant Wise would no doubt be surprised to know that California is now home to almost 40 million people, the fundamental water constraints that he described exist today. So wrote Navy lieutenant Henry Augustus Wise, after spending considerable time in the Golden State in 1847. Only in the plains and valleys where streams are to be found, and even those will have to be watered by artificial irrigation, does there seem the hope of being sufficient tillable land to repay the husbandman and afford subsistence to inhabitants.” 1 “Under no contingency does the natural face of Upper California appear susceptible of supporting a very large population: the country is hilly and mountainous great dryness prevails during the summers, and occasionally excessive droughts parch up the soil for periods of 12 or 18 months. The 1st and 2nd Los Angeles Aqueducts in 2001. An environmental historian assesses the energy cost of the massive infrastructure that brings water to the American West.
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