Water & The West – Part I

On the same day that the headwinds ran roughshod over my expectations for an easy downhill ride I wrote about in last week’s post, I underwent a brief, but freaky incident of cognitive dissonance caused by, believe it or not, hydrological engineering.

This was Day 7 of the trek, and I had descended from Snoqualmie Pass to the farmland abutting the Yakima River. The trail down the eastern slopes of the Cascades gently deposited me onto the edge of a broad plateau alongside the Yakima. This terrain, like most of the dry land that lies between the coastal ranges and the Rocky Mountains, presents a paradox. It’s an open yet parched landscape, cut throughout with deep folds revealing channels, carved over millennia, where swift rivers fed by snowmelt and mountain springs run. In the nineteenth century, the land contained ample, wide-open spaces for a restless nation of pioneers to settle, but homesteaders were sorely disappointed because after the choice riparian plots were taken, there was not enough water to irrigate and grow crops on their allotted 160 acres (despite the false claims of government officials, bankers, railroad barons, and land speculators – grifters all). Not only is this because the land receives only a trivial amount of rainfall, but it is hellishly hot in the summer and bitterly cold in the winter. In short, west of the 100th parallel in central Nebraska, the American West is neither a hospitable nor a forgiving landscape. It also doesn’t naturally support a large population.

Left to its own devices, the land would have remained only capable of supporting small populations nestled by the rivers, or, as it had for centuries, providing sustenance for semi-nomadic Indigenous peoples. Yes, small-scale irrigation – pioneered by the Mormons who settled in Utah or in the Snake River Valley of Idaho – did support larger populations, but it wasn’t until the advent of technological advances in the early twentieth century (namely, massive dams that created large reservoirs and centrifugal pumps to move the stored water) that the landscape was forever altered. This massive, taxpayer funded effort was dubbed “reclamation” and managed by the federal Bureau of Reclamation. But more on that in Part II.

I was not prepared for the feat of hydrological engineering that had reshaped the land. In fact, I was so unprepared that soon after I rode past the town of Cle Elum something happened that, for a split second, made me question reality.

I had just crossed a dirt road that intersected the trail when I heard the faint but distinct sound of rushing water -- above me to my right. Wait, what?!? How is it possible, I thought, that the sound of water flowing is coming from the direction of the sky? I knew that the Yakima River flowed outside of my line of vision to my left and below, so where was the water coming from? I scanned my surroundings. Ahead, I saw terra firma and no pipes, gutters, troughs, or culverts. To my right all I saw was a low ridge that ran continuously alongside the trail. No water there. I felt I was riding through some bizarre, Escher-like landscape.

I shook my head, as if trying to clear a hallucination.

I knew that if I pushed ahead, this mental tension, this wrinkle of cognitive dissonance, would eventually resolve itself.

(Therein lies the difference between a bike trek and regular, day-to-day living. In my experience, it seems I am constantly – sometimes continuously – faced with unresolved tension. On a bike trek, however, the unknowns don’t usually last for long. If there’s a doubt surrounding, for example, the body’s ability, a mechanical mystery noise, or, in this case, the illogic of the sound of water running above my head, pushing ahead provides an answer to the unknown. In contrast, off the bike, as I move through my quotidian routine, the unresolved remains suspended in place for long stretches of time, providing no relief to the tension.)

So, I moved ahead, confident the source of the mystery would be revealed. I pedaled down the dirt and gravel trail for about a hundred yards and soon the sound of water grew louder. I heard the distinct roar of water coming from above. I continued cautiously, my eyes scanning in all directions. The flowing sound increased until it reached a crescendo of white noise. I glanced up to my right and – ecco – the Escher painting resolved. I saw a steep culvert with water rushing down in evenly stepped waves, as if the concrete channel was built for a water park thrill-ride. The water flowed into a pipe under the trail. I got off the bike and walked to the other side. I saw a gentler but still steady flow emerge onto a narrow concrete channel, which spilled out into some unseen basin, which then flowed into the Yakima River.

What I thought was merely a low ridge was actually an elevated canal that was built decades before as part of the Yakima River Basin project. Upstream, water was pumped from a reservoir and flowed, with the help of gravity, to provide water for irrigation. Thanks to significant snowfall during the winter of 2020-2021, there was a surplus of water, and I surmised that I was seeing the excess returning to the Yakima River.

If you watch the video, you get a good sense of how hydrological engineering has altered the landscape. You also see two opposite forces coming together in a single frame – the man-made ridge and concrete culvert inside a narrow strip of riparian green with nearly bare hills in the background. The landscape as it is and the landscape as we want it to be.

The honey-onion dichotomy of water “reclamation” in the west is evident with just a little curiosity and probing. On the honey side of the equation, the dams, pumps, and waterways that dot the west have led to increased prosperity for the region and the country. Even though the brittle wind and water-carved landscape is not suitable for large population centers, cheap water and hydroelectricity have allowed us Americans to expand our urban footprint in the Sun Belt (think Los Angeles or Tucson), grow crops where hardly any rain falls (even in Sonoran Desert in Arizona), and power factories that produce aircraft and data centers in the Pacific Northwest.

At the same time, the dams have displaced indigenous nations, disrupted river ecosystems, and caused both massive sediment buildup that reduces reservoir capacity and increases dangerous soil salinization levels in irrigated areas (to name but a few onions). And thanks to the “prior appropriate doctrine” where whoever first puts water to beneficial use gets the strongest claim regardless of land ownership, you have situations where senior rights holder (often agricultural or mining interests with century-old claims) maintain their priority during droughts, while growing cities and environmental needs compete for the remaining water.

We all love our honey. But eventually, we are going to have to eat those onions. Raw.