In 1889, John Wesley Powell tagged along as a group of US Senators toured the western United States in an effort to understand “the irrigation problem”. What Powell reported looks kinda familiar:

“The winds are drifting sands here and there,” John Wesley Powell said of his 1889 visit to the Lower Rio Grande Valley, where the river passes from New Mexico to Texas and Mexico. “The farms, orchards, and vineyards are perishing.”

More in the morning newspaper.