The ongoing Oroville Dam crisis has received modest national attention, in part because the press hasn’t figured out how to blame it on Trump. Moreover, attributing the surfeit of water to global warming, the only other respectable choice, seems inane.
But the history of California water projects is worth considering in some depth. The struggles over California infrastructure — not only physical edifices but also the tremendously influential 1974 movie
Chinatown — have played a central role in some of the bigger changes in public and elite attitudes.
California led the way into big-government modernism by building dams for the masses, then into postmodernist disdain for the palpable. The main constant has been that everything gets more expensive.