Federal Inflation

On March 24, 1928, Mr. Leatherwood (R - Utah) of the Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation, submitted the following opinion on HR 5773, The Boulder Canyon Project Act:

In my minority report of last year on this bill I emphasized the fact that it is a scheme to secure construction by the Federal Government of a power project under the guise of a flood control and irrigation measure... A comparatively simple engineering job of flood control and river regulation, which should not cost not more than ten to fifteen million dollars, is here made the excuse for an unprecedented engineering experiment costing not less than $125,000,000 and risking at least 200 million more.

Under this bill the federal government is not to stop when it has finished the job of river regulation and flood control, but is to provide a hydroelectric power supply adequate for more than half the present population of California, a domestic water supply for 10,000,000 hoped-for but nonexistent inhabitants of southern California cities, and irrigation canals for hundreds of thousands of acres of new alfalfa, cotton and corn land in the United States and the water for hundreds of thousands of additional acres in Mexico. Political pressure, and not genuine necessity; buncombe, spread by propaganda, and not facts; log rolling trades, but not merit -- all employed over a period of six years -- have placed the bill on the calendars of the Congress.

HR 5773 was approved on December 21, 1928, and the Boulder Canyon Dam (renamed Hoover Dam) went on to become the most-successful dam ever built by the Federal Government.

Or was it?

Mr. Leatherwood makes two good points:

1. Why should the Federal Government deliver cheap hydropower and water to one region?
2. Why should a project be built for "nonexistent inhabitants"?

Ironically, the Hoover Dam was a little too successful: Southern California's population boom (and sprawl) was fueled by cheap power (from Hoover Dam) and water (from the Colorado River Aqueduct) from the Boulder Canyon Project.*

At a minimum, Southern California should have paid for a project that was to its benefit. At a maximum, the project would not have been built without federal subsidies -- and southern California would have been a very different place today.

As you all will know, Mr. Leatherman was perhaps the last of his generation -- a congressman in a small federal government -- and we are perhaps seeing his nightmare today: A republican-led government that's larger (and more invasive) than any US Government that ever existed. Perhaps he was lucky to pass away in 1929, at only 56 years old.

Bottom Line: Federal subsidies were a big driver of population growth in Southern California.

* In Chapter 3 of my dissertation (and this newspaper article), I describe how MWDSC had to subsidize the sale of "too much" water from the Colorado River between 1941 and 1955 (and perhaps even now) -- artificially lowering the cost of living in a desert. Today, "too many" people in that desert continue to expect cheap water.