West Needs to Conserve Critical Water Supply or Face Collapse, DeVoto Warns

The Western United States, and therefore the country as a whole, faces bank-ruptcy and disaster if today's meager water supplies are not carefully conserved, prominent historian and author Bernard DeVoto '18 warned last night.

Since the West exists on the "knife-edge of natural sanction," DeVoto said, "there is no margin of flexibility in violation of conservation laws." The former Pulitzer prize winner in History spoke before over 100 people in the Kirkland House Junior Common Room.

Droughts stand far ahead of earth-quakes, hail storms, grasshopper invasions, and the other violences which constitute the natural hazards of life in the West, he said. Lack of water is so serious a problem that the West today lives solely off the drained snowfall on mountains 7000 feet above sea level, he added.

It is therefore essential to retain the the vast forests on mountain sides, the only natural watersheds of the West, DeVoto said. Special interest groups have always sought to destroy these natural protections, however, and today under the Republican administration they have obtained powerful influence in the governmental control agencies, he added to the audience.

"If special interest groups get control of these lands the West will be bankrupt in less than a generation," DeVoto predicted. "The problem is that of preserving the West, not just the beauty of the forests. If the West goes bankrupt, so will the rest of the country," he said.

Shortage of water will soon stop the increase in population and industry in the West, DeVoto claimed. "Either Arizona or California will have to stop expanding, and then both will," he said.