Word: canyonize
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...will flow into the St. Croix River, to the Mississippi, south to an aqueduct at Keokuk, Iowa, and from there west to the Colorado River and into the Grand Canyon and many other southwestern canyons, filling them up to the rims--enough water to supply the parched Southwest from Los Angeles to Santa Fe for more than 50 years...
Lake Superior is a valuable asset, but the Superior Canyon will prove to be even more valuable than the lake was, according to people familiar with the situation...
...resource-management planners, jabbing his finger at a graph. "Lake Superior isn't much of a tourist attraction. Who wants to come and look at 31,820 sq. mi. of water? Nobody. The water's too cold for swimming, and frankly, lakes don't draw like canyons do. Ask Lake Mead. Lakes only draw fishermen, a bunch of owly guys who drive in, buy a six-pack of beer and a bologna sandwich. Canyons draw families. And the Superior Canyon, without a doubt, will outdraw the Grand. It's bigger, for one thing, plus it has islands and sites...
That's true. Candido and his pregnant 17-year-old wife, decent folk down on their luck, huddle in a makeshift camp in the canyon and climb out every morning to find work at a labor exchange. But the sight of hungry Mexicans spooks Kyra's clients, and she sees to it that the exchange is shut. Delaney's liberal beliefs crumble, and he votes with other residents to build a wall, with a gate, around their development. The author, mistrusting his skill and the reader's acuteness, relentlessly flashes irony alerts. Candido gets work constructing the wall, knowing well...
...botches a good theme: the shuddering distaste of California's patio-living Anglos for the Mexican illegals who perform the state's stoop labor. His pale hero is Delaney, a nature writer who has moved with his wife Kyra, a real estate shark, to a housing development above Topanga Canyon. Delaney is not just politically correct, he's politically exquisite, but when a Mexican man, Candido, blunders in front of his white Acura on a canyon road, his reaction is angry revulsion: the wounded wet back, to whom he gives a $20 bill, is an infiltrator...