An Infinite Supply of Finite Resources 7 I should have known better. On our operation, farming and irriga-
tion were like conjoined twins. Each year, as winter turned to spring, the
two canals bordering our land filled with water. The largest of the two,
which we called “the big canal,” could fill an Olympic-size swimming
pool in 0 seconds. Its width and depth varied with the contours of the
foothills it followed.
In wintertime, I sometimes climbed down its sides and looked
up as if I had descended into the bowels of an oceangoing tanker. In
summertime, I occasionally jumped in at the end of a long hot day, but
I was always leery of being swept too far and having to struggle to climb
out. Its volume and size had gained my respect.
The canals were not the only reminders of water. Twenty-five miles
away was the reservoir that filled both canals. High in the mountains
were white-capped peaks, signs of melting snow turning to water before
flowing downstream into rivers, lakes, and municipal storage tanks.
Pipelines brought that water into residences and commercial buildings.
Fire hydrants appeared beside main roads. Homes and schools were
plumbed with spigots and water fountains. Because water was available
on demand, there was no need to think about it.
In school, teachers covered the water cycle, from evaporation to
condensation in the atmosphere, precipitation through rain and snow,
collection through rivers and lakes, then repeat. Because we were part
of the arid West, to nudge the hydrologic cycle along, we counted on
Congress to finance the construction of massive dams, aqueducts, and
canals.
Buried in these dams were the bodies of workers who helped build
them, my teacher told the class one day. Then she showed a black-and-
white reel-to-reel film of gigantic dams being constructed across the
West. Once they started pouring concrete, the narrator said, they could
not stop without weakening the structure. For an impressionable kid,
it made sense that workers could die this way.
In films and pictures, the sheer size and massive amounts of water
gushing out of their bypass tunnels reinforced the grandeur of dams like
Hoover, Glen Canyon, and Grand Coulee. The structures and enormous
lakes that filled in behind were legacies to the engineers, hydrologists,
geologists, and workers like those who dangled hundreds of feet above