This is exactly the sort of ignorant of the past viewpoint I was complaining about.

The part of CA we're talking about was a desert shithole before (arguably still is). There's debate about just how much we can sustainably irrigate it, but at least we can irrigate it. The alternative is basically no agricultural activity. Maybe some grazing.

Ditto for the Mississippi. It floods "a little" now vs "somewhere on it is getting wiped out just about every year" before. If it's only happening once a decade now that's a huge improvement. You can mislead all you want by saying things like "worst since X" and whatnot but the fact of the matter is that the system clearly works ok if most of the Xs are from before the system was there.

The material wealth generated by the economic activity enabled by these two projects is almost impossible to quantify.

I think it speaks volumes that you didn't even attempt to address my 3rd example.

You talking about the Imperial Valley or the Central Valley? The former is naturally desert, the latter was naturally abundant in wetlands and flood-prone grasslands, before agriculture took over.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Trough

It sounds like you're talking about the Imperial Valley, which is a different ball of wax from the whole wetland-draining argument here.

I object to "desert shithole" --- the Sonoran Desert is an ecosystem worthy of value in its own right, we just don't benefit from it as humans unless we turn to resource extraction or agriculture.