Ten rivers in America's future, from volume 2, the Report of the President's Water Resources Policy Commission

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Parti BASINS OF THE WEST Water problems loom large throughout the river basins of the West. Here water is a precious commodity. Its presence or its absence deter- mines the extent of agriculture and industry, and the distribution of our people. Here water is the determinant of our economic and social life. Accordingly, 5 of the major river basins selected for study lie wholly or in large part west of the ninety-seventh meridian. They are the Colum- bia, the Central Valley of California, the Missouri, the Colorado, and the Rio Grande. Their analysis constitutes Part I of this volume. A major part of these basins is comprised of arid or semiarid land. In all of them water is the resource which most seriously affects all forms of economic growth. This has been the case as long as men have lived on and worked these lands. The region is marked by the sharpest contrasts. Here stand the Nation's highest mountains and lowest depressions; areas of the highest rainfall and runoff, and desert areas; great urban areas and uninhabited rugged or desert lands; torrential rains and long droughts. Here are the irrigated lands and half the potential water power of the Nation. Westward into the States of these basins a great migration of people has poured for decades. In the past 10 years the Pacific Coast States have grown by nearly 50 percent. With population must come industry and trade in increasing amounts to supplement agriculture, timber, and mining in rounding out the economy. XIX