CADILLAC DESERT' CONTINUES.

Synopsis: A look at the political and environmental fights that stemmed from the transformation of California's Central Valley from a semi-arid plain into the most productive and environmentally altered agricultural region in the history of the world. In the region's heyday in 1974, 25 percent of American food came from the region.

The Central Valley Project was the largest water works in history. But President Jimmy Carter, a farmer himself, called for an investigation that uncovered cost overruns, environmental threats and terrible poverty among the farm workers.

In the mid-'80s, the combined effect of bird deformities caused by toxic water runoff from farms, Congressional investigations into water subsidies and a 6-year-drought turned public opinion in favor of water reform.

Now, almost all the corporate farms have left the region, and water restrictions - which began in 1992 when an urban-dominated Congress enacted a water reform law - have permanently changed the region.

Look who's talking: Floyd Dominy (commissioner of reclamation, 1959-1969), Kathleen Brown (California state treasurer, 1991-1994), Jason Peltier (manager of the Central Valley Project Water Association) and Marc Reisner (author of ``Cadillac Desert'').