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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. About what percent of the state of California receives less than twenty inches of precipitation a year?
(a) 65%.
(b) 40%.
(c) 50%.
(d) 25%.

2. When was the Central Valley Project Act passed in California?
(a) 1908.
(b) 1933.
(c) 1917.
(d) 1942.

3. Chapter Ten is subtitled what?
(a) “Chinatown.”
(b) “The Go-Go Years.”
(c) “A Country of Illusion.”
(d) “Those Who Refuse to learn…”

4. Floyd Dominy was Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner until what year?
(a) 1977.
(b) 1969.
(c) 1942.
(d) 1983.

5. San Francisco is just slightly rainier than which Mexican city, according to the author in Chapter Ten?
(a) Monterrey.
(b) Chihuahua.
(c) Mexico City.
(d) Tijuana.

6. What is the title of Chapter Six?
(a) “Dominy.”
(b) “Things Fall Apart.”
(c) “Rivals in Crime.”
(d) “The Peanut Farmer and the Pork Barrel.”

7. The Pine Flat Dam is located approximately twenty miles east of what city?
(a) Fresno, California.
(b) Redding, California.
(c) Oakland, California.
(d) Truckee, California.

8. In what year did the Fontenelle Dam spring a big leak, according to the author in Chapter Eleven?
(a) 1958.
(b) 1988.
(c) 1965.
(d) 1974.

9. According to the author, “[Ronald] Reagan, as a westerner, should have been a friend of dams, but he was growing more conservative by the hour, and true conservatives tend to dislike” what?
(a) “Great public works.”
(b) “Impacting nature.”
(c) “More taxes.”
(d) “Endless spending.”

10. The author states in Chapter Ten that “In eighty-two years, the Bureau would see the breakup of only one major illegal landholding through to the end” What company was this?
(a) The Tenneco Corporation.
(b) The DiGiorgio Company.
(c) Sierra Pacific Industries.
(d) Irvine Ranch.

11. In what year did Harry S. Truman assume the office of the U.S. Presidency?
(a) 1945.
(b) 1937.
(c) 1932.
(d) 1949.

12. What handpicked Fresno legislature member once referred to groundwater regulation as “World War III”?
(a) Harry Morrison.
(b) Cordell Hull.
(c) Ken Maddy.
(d) Ray Roberts.

13. In San Francisco, average rainfall in May is how much?
(a) One-quarter of an inch.
(b) Four-tenths of an inch.
(c) Six-tenths of an inch.
(d) Two-thirds of an inch.

14. What was the name of the city in which the Hohokam lived and where downtown Phoenix is today?
(a) Mesa Verde.
(b) Palo Cedro.
(c) Buena Vista.
(d) Pueblo Grande.

15. Where was Harry S. Truman born?
(a) Medford, Oregon.
(b) Lamar, Missouri.
(c) Pueblo, Colorado.
(d) Cody, Wyoming.

Short Answer Questions

1. In 1962, there were how many megawatts of installed hydroelectric generating capacity in the United States?

2. By the mid-1920s, thanks to irrigation pumping, California had surpassed what as the richest agricultural state in the country?

3. Who is described as “a lawyer in the Interior solicitor’s office through the 1960s and early 1970s, until she resigned and joined the legal staff of California’s Department of Water Resources” in Chapter Ten?

4. In January of 1862, San Francisco recorded how many inches of rain?

5. The dedication ceremony of the Hoover Dam drew approximately how many people?

(see the answer keys)

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