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A Word, Please, from Adi Weiss's avatar

Thank you for this interesting and informative article.

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John imperio's avatar

Excellent post as always: the Colorado River Compact, sounds really fascinating almost like something a evil genius would come up with. Professor can you recommend further reading on the Colorado River Compact? Do you write about it in more depth in “dreams of el dorado”?

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H. W. Brands's avatar

Try Norris Hundley, Water and the West.

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John imperio's avatar

Thanks for the recommendation. I was recently reading on ap news that google has just halted plans to built a data center in Chile over water usage concerns. In a drought stricken country like Chile the amount of water needed for the data center would take away water from people. Do you see any parallels between what is happening in Chile and the Colorado river compact? https://apnews.com/article/chile-google-data-center-water-drought-environment-d1c6a7a8e8e6e45257ac84fb750b2162

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H. W. Brands's avatar

There are parallels in various places - wherever water is short.

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John imperio's avatar

Professor thanks for the book recommendation I just finished reading “water and the west” by Norris Hundley Jr but Edward Taylor name only appears once in the book. And even In the appendix to the book there is a copy of the Colorado river compact and Edward Taylor wasn’t even asked to sign it. So how important was he to the Colorado river compact? I’m slightly confused. I did first it interesting that Reed smoot “was the president of the electric company of Provo Utah which had connections with the Utah power and light company.” (From school I always remember him for the Smoot-hawley act”.)

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H. W. Brands's avatar

The signers of the compact were representatives of the state governments and the government of Mexico. Not members of Congress.

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Frank Mariani's avatar

I just finished watching “1923,” the prequel to “Yellowstone,” where the land was manipulated for greed. This post has eerie echoes of that series, which is both a compliment and maybe an omen

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Daniel Moran's avatar

Great post! I enjoy your substack very much, as I did your biography of Reagan and Dreams of El Dorado, which I read on a trip to CO last year.

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