Arid Empire by Natalie Koch

Author:Natalie Koch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

Source : University of Arizona Special Collections, UA Bio, Hodges, Carl N. 1937–

Figure 4.2. Richard Kassander (left) and Carl N. Hodges (right) at the UA Solar Energy Research Laboratory in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico, 1964.

The UA Solar Lab received a grant to begin work with the University of Sonora in Puerto Peñasco to build a solar-powered desalting plant in the early 1960s. Funding first came from the US Department of the Interior’s Office of Saline Water (OSW), but Kassander soon drew on his connections at the Rockefeller Foundation to secure additional support to pair the desalting plant with plastic-covered greenhouses.17 Their basic idea was that these paired desal-greenhouse facilities could be built in coastal desert zones all around the world, simultaneously solving both food and water challenges in arid regions.

The only problem was how to power the system. Entrepreneur that he was, Kassander was keenly aware of the importance of selling the story of a solar solution for coastal deserts’ water desalination and agricultural needs. Without solar power, desalination for the greenhouse component of the project would not have been economical. As noted already, the energy demands for desalinated seawater is a major reason that the Arabian Peninsula’s coastal regions had never developed commercially oriented agriculture. Hodges and Kassander hoped to engineer a solar solution, but they never did succeed on this account, and the facility was instead powered by diesel engines. This didn’t stop them, though, from misrepresenting their work as a success: in their advertisements for UA’s desal-greenhouse project, both men often (though not always) erroneously depicted it as solar-powered.

Hodges quickly fell in love with the limelight and reveled in being characterized as a “boy wonder” or “wunderkind.” Kassander too was eager to promote this characterization of Hodges for reasons that are not entirely clear. Nonetheless, there are many cases in the University of Arizona archives showing Kassander advocating for Hodges, often unduly or in an effort to secure him undeserved status. At one point in 1968, for example, Kassander pushed UA president Richard Harvill to allow Hodges to receive a doctoral degree in “Water Resource Administration” over the opposition of the university’s Graduate Council and Advisory Council, and after having failed his Master’s-level exams.18 Ultimately, Kassander’s efforts proved futile, to Hodges’ lifelong chagrin. So while he never received his graduate degree, the primary ticket to being taken seriously in academia, he became adept at harnessing his youth and handsomeness to sell himself as a “visionary,” and reaped the personal, financial, and political rewards like the perfect grifter he was to become.

Together, Kassander and Hodges ensured that the UA Solar Lab’s Mexico project received ample press coverage in both popular media outlets and science journals. It was profiled in a 1967 issue of Time magazine, which heralded Hodges as a man of action and foresight:

Although the oceans lap at their shores, more than 18,000 miles of the world’s coastlines are virtually uninhabited because of the lack of available fresh water. Visionaries have long dreamed of using sea water to

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