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<br />Background <br /> <br />Aridity and aridity alone, makes the various wests, one. <br />- Wallace Stegner <br /> <br />WHY IS THE WEST SO PREOCCUPIED WITH WATER RIGHTS? <br /> <br />Eastern ObselVefS of western <br />water allocation may be puzzled by <br />their western cousins' seeming <br />obsession with this issue. After all, <br />they might argue, the United States is <br />one country. Why are westerners so <br />preoccupied with waler? <br /> <br />The answer is both simple and <br />complex. Wallace Stegner's quol8lion <br />pinpoints the most fundamental <br />reason. Historian Walter Prescott <br />Webb said the same thing in different <br />words: "The primary "/Illy oj the <br />West is the shortage of WOIeT. " <br /> <br />Geography lays the matter out, <br />plain and simple, From about the <br /> <br />eel 74 '7 <br /> <br /> <br />" <br /> <br />ninery-eighth meridian of longitude <br />west 10 the Pacific coast, average <br />annual rainfall dips significantly <br />below the twenty inches that normally <br />sustain nonirrigated crops in the East. <br />Scarcity generates westerners' <br />preoccupation with water and water <br />rights. <br /> <br /><Xl <br />... <br /> <br />Though water scarcity in the <br />West is common, the human habits, <br />laws and institutions that arose to <br />cope with it are complex. To a <br />considerable degree, this complexity <br />is a reflection of the exacting years of <br />hard labor and expense incurred by <br />those who survived the stringent <br />conditions of the western climate. <br />