The year is 1969, and revolution is in the air. Protests clog American campuses and streets. Richard Nixon enters the White House on behalf of his “silent majority.” NASA puts men on the moon. And the hippie counterculture threatens to remake the world in its image. It’s a kaleidoscopic time in which all things seem possible. Even the Texas Legislature—that citadel of chest-forward corruption and gleeful reactionaryism—is dreaming big. Lawmakers advance, with little debate or fanfare, an almost fantastical proposal. Problem: Texas is projected to run out of water by 1985 if something isn’t done, according to a state water plan developed in 1968. Solution: a modest proposal to divert an ocean of water from the Mississippi River below New Orleans, move it across Louisiana, and…
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