Posts Tagged: personal drives

Analysis

Reflections on Cadillac Desert

William Mulholland, pointing. Mulholland, who pushed water development in L.A., was the superintendent of the Los Angeles Water Department. (Image source: Los Angeles Times, via California WaterBlog)

In 1987, when Mark Reisner published his book Cadillac Desert, I had just begun professing on water management. The book went “viral,” before the word viral had its present-day internet-intoxicated meaning. The book offered a compelling revisionist history and understanding of water development in the American West, based on economic self-interest, ideology, and Floyd Dominy’s personal drives.

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