Far from Moscow, in the arid steppes of the south of the European USSR, carrying out the Brezhnev program means wresting water from established users and transferring it to irrigation. The government's new priorities clash with the old in many places but particularly in the operation of the dozens of power stations located astride the major rivers of the European USSR. These stations control the timing, amount, and reliability of streamflow for all users. The issue here is no longer the reallocation of capital in Moscow but the much more complicated and delicate matter of overseeing a partial transfer of power among competing agencies at a multitude of local points. Power officials have shown themselves resourceful at resisting change. As a result, the leaders' new priorities have been only partly translated into real changes in the field, and the reclamation program, for all its high priority in Moscow, is weakened where it ultimately counts.

Wherever water is scarce, hydropower and reclamation are natural competitors. Irrigators want water in summer; power-grid operators want it in winter to run through their turbines when demand for electricity is at a maximum. This means power-grid operators try to keep reservoirs as full as possible at the very time when irrigators want them drawn down. Unavoidably then, reallocating priorities at this local level means trading electricity against irrigation water. Moreover, hydropower stations supply a special kind of electricity. Because they can be stopped and started easily (unlike steam generators, which develop stresses and cracks if they are heated and cooled too often and too quickly), they are the ideal way to cover daily and weekly peaks in demand, as well as unforeseen needs in between.