RECLAIMING THE DESERT 179 



tional Park a lake fools no one. The vertical plunge 

 of its rocky sides, were there no other indications, 

 alone shouts its artificial character and consequent 

 total unfitness for a place among lands reserved of 

 old as examples of nature unmodified. The park 

 boundary-lines should be redrawn to exclude it from 

 misrepresentation so flagrant as Hetch Hetchy. 



So with reclamation reservoirs everywhere. 

 Usually serving best on levels not much higher than 

 the lands they are meant to water, in areas usually 

 long since wrested from nature, their location has 

 little in common with water power, which prefers 

 the narrow canyons of high river sources. The 

 same water may serve double duty, power returning 

 it to streams where, much farther down, irrigation 

 impounds it for distribution over broad valleys. 



Irrigation seldom legitimately wars with nature 

 conservation as exemplified in our National Parks. 

 It locates far below them. But not infrequently is 

 irrigation's service to humanity a camouflaging robe 

 flung over what really are water power schemes to 

 pass a bill through Congress, just as San Francisco's 

 alleged need of city water was the camouflaging 

 robe concealing the Hetch Hetchy water power 

 joker. Thousands will always believe that prospec- 

 tive water power, not those disproved irrigation 

 claims, was the real purpose behind the Yellowstone 

 Lake bills which conservation organizations fought 

 four years in Congress, for the time successfully. 



Every reclamation reservoir has its potential 



