1. The Aboriginal Waterscape: Manipulation and Near Harmony -- The waterscape -- Waterways and lifeways -- Agriculture and cultural patterns -- Symbiosis and community -- 2. Hispanic Patterns: Community and Authority -- "Apportion water justly and fairly" -- Lessons in survival -- Misjudgments -- Royal authority and community rights -- Community obligations -- Community rights and private rights -- When rights collide: bien procumunal -- The darker side -- 3. The American Takeover: Laissez-Faire, Localism, and Monopoly -- American political culture -- "First in time, first in right" -- Hydraulicking and environmental destruction -- The politics of flood control -- Riparian rights -- Monopoly and a clash of rights -- Lux v. Haggin and the California doctrine -- The irrigation district and the persistence of monopoly -- Localism and the search for alternatives -- The rainmakers -- The progressive impulse: from laissez-faire to centralized planning -- Toward the reclamation act -- 4. Urban Imperialism: A Tale of Two Cities -- Los Angeles: from Hispanic village to American city -- Legerdemain and the Pueblo water right -- Girding for expansion: municipal control -- The Owens Valley caper -- An aqueduct for the future -- The San Fernando Valley: insider information for private gain -- Los Angeles's water colonies -- The tragedy and legacy of the expert: William Muholland -- San Francisco: instant city with an instant water problem -- Hetch Hetchy predicaments: the federal government and Boss Ruef -- Hetch Hetchy embattled -- Toward a utilitarian triumph -- The ironies of victory -- A comparison of two cities --
5. Hydraulic Society Triumphant: The Great Projects -- The Boulder Canyon project -- The Imperial Valley impulse -- The Colorado River compact -- New players and new battles -- Compromises and enactment -- The Imperial Valley and the betrayal of reclamation law -- New water and accelerated urbanization -- The Central Valley project -- Progressive era promise and disappointment -- Toward a state plan -- American political culture and the Central Valley project -- From state to federal project -- A project at last -- The battle over acreage limitation -- "Technical compliance": a bipartisan legacy -- Public versus private power -- The state water project -- A state plan -- fragmentation, compromise and confusion -- New water, growth, and inequities -- 6. Hydraulic Society on the Defensive -- Arizona v. California -- The Environmental Movement -- The peripheral canal fight: round one -- The peripheral canal fight: round two -- The Pueblo water right challenged -- Mono Lake and the public trust doctrine -- Owens Valley war: renewed and cooled but not over-- The fight for the right to instream use -- An increasingly vulnerable southland --
7. Water Policy at a Crossroads
Tradition versus Reform: The Fate of the Stanislaus River
New and old challenges to dams and levees
The impermanence of dams: earthquakes, silt, neglect, and flawed planning
Los Angeles: a vexing in dams, levees, floods and public policy
Vulnerable levees and the delta
Environmental crisis: bay, delta, and CALFED
Environmental crisis: Central Valley
Environmental crisis: Southern California
Subsidized agriculture and social inequity
Water marketing: hope, threat, and challenge
The Imperial Valley, MWD, and the market
The Imperial Valley, MWD, San Diego and the market
The Wheeling-rate war: MWD and San Diego
The government intercedes
One war down, another to go
The Central Valley project, "reform, " and the market
MWD, the San Joaquin Valley, and the market
The quest for security and equity
Open spaces and farmland: going, going...
Calls for reform, fanciful and otherwise
