And each Congressional committee Is moved by pork, if not pity.

From “The Feather River Anthology or “Holy Water’” 1962 by Kenneth Boulding

Remarked the Bureau to the Corps

“Confine yourself to flood and war”

Said Engineers to Reclamation

“You are obsessed by irrigation”.

This acrimonious debate

Brings water to the thirsty State,

For mutual recriminations

Are soothed by large appropriations,

And each Congressional committee

Is moved by pork, if not pity.

The danger, it is plain to see,

Comes when the Agencies agree,

For what they might agree about 

Is apt to cause an Urban Drought, 

By so pre-empting nature’s juices 

To strictly vegetable uses.