How John Wesley Powell Could Have Changed the Course of America in the 19th Century

John Wesley Powell wrote a report that divided the western United States into territories based on watersheds that looks like this:


Map of Water Sheds of Arid Region of United States by John Wesley Powell
Torpyl, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Of course, his ideas were rejected due to political and profit-driven reason, as well as clashing with the notions of individualism and personal freedom. But it seems to me that adopting his ideas would have prevented the Dust Bowl from occurring, not to mention the issues that are being faced today in the West.