[Aarostotle]

What a pessimistic view from the person managing the River District.

How many people would the river basin have supported without damming and irrigation? Far fewer than 40M. In other words, the engineers clearly engineered nature and made it much more hospitable to human life in the arid West.

Sounds like they might have overshot and can't meet tomorrow's demand, but even so, the status quo is certainly far superior to an un-engineered Colorado River Basin.

[klyrs]

> What a pessimistic view from the person managing the River District.

Good managers are honest about their ability to address a problem given the tools at their disposal.

[voz_]

> but even so, the status quo is certainly far superior to an un-engineered Colorado River Basin.

Making an uninhabitable area, habitable, at the cost of a total destruction of natural resources does not seem like its "far superior".

[Aarostotle]

That depends on your standard of value.

Do you justify things in terms of human life? Conversely, is your standard that nature should be left untouched?

As for me, I would say that flooding the valleys that are now Lake Mead and Lake Powell, enabling tens of millions of people to live, is worth far more than whichever critters and plants were displaced.

Besides, the issue here is not "total destruction" it is over-allocation. We have not destroyed the Colorado River. Rather, it seems like we just have too much demand for its supply. Did I misread that?