When the Rivers Run Dry
Water-The Defining Crisis Of The Twenty-First Century
By Fred Pearce
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Veteran science writer Pearce (Turning Up the Heat) makes a strong-and scary-case that a worldwide water shortage is the most fearful looming environmental crisis.
With a drumbeat of facts both horrific (thousands of wells in India and Bangladesh are poisoned by fluoride and arsenic) and fascinating (it takes 20 tons of water to make one pound of coffee), the former New Scientist news editor documents a "kind of cataclysm" already affecting many of the world's great rivers. The Rio Grande is drying up before it reaches the Gulf of Mexico; the Nile has been dammed to a trickle; reservoirs behind ill-conceived dams sacrifice millions of gallons of water to evaporation, while wetlands and floodplains downriver dry up as water flow dwindles.
In India, villagers lacking access to clean water for irrigation and drinking are sinking tube wells hundreds of feet down, plundering underground supplies far faster than rainfall can replace them-the same fate facing the Ogallala aquifer of the American Midwest. The news, recounted with a scientist's relentless accumulation of observable fact, is grim. Maps. (Mar.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Water Follies
Ground Water Pumping and the Fate of America's Fresh Waters
By Robert Glennon
From Scientific American
In the high plains of Texas the farmers who grow cotton, alfalfa and other crops are entitled by law to as much underground water as they can reasonably use. No matter that this water comes from the Ogallala Aquifer, that vast underground reservoir whose levels have dropped precipitously since 1940. No matter that the overpumping threatens eventually to put thousands of farmers across seven states out of business. The illusion, codified in the law not just in Texas but in much of the U.S., is that groundwater is somehow boundless, or in a category apart from lakes, rivers and streams, and ought not be regulated, even for the common good. Now comes Robert Glennon to puncture this illusion, in a book as rich in detail as it is devastating in its argument.
Its focus on groundwater brings overdue attention to a category that accounts for nearly a quarter of American freshwater use. Its title, Water Follies, sets the tone for tales that can be tragicomic; this is a book about water being squandered, so it is also, as the author puts it, a book about "human foibles, including greed, stubbornness, and especially, the unlimited human capacity to ignore reality." Take, for example, his story of the fast-food french fry.
It used to be that potatoes were grown on unirrigated land, he writes, but Americans' love of processed foods changed that. Uneven moisture leads to small, knobby, misshapen potatoes, so most American growers, even in places such as Minnesota, routinely irrigate their lands, to produce products acceptable to the industry and customers like McDonald's. But in Minnesota the groundwater that farmers pump for potatoes turned out to be the same water that helps to sustain the Straight River, a major trout fishery. Even modest pumping for potatoes, a federal study eventually concluded, had the potential to reduce the river's flow by one third during irrigation season, with adverse impact on the brown trout. For now, the trout are not in danger, but that could change if Minnesota were to approve applications from farmers still eager to see potato planting and irrigation widen. "One long-term answer, of course," Glennon notes, with characteristic wryness, "is for us, as American consumers, to accept french fries that have slightly different colors, or minor discolorations, or even ones that are not long enough to stick out from a super-size carton." Farmers are not the only ones who get a hard time for their shortsightedness.
Bottled-water purveyors, particularly Perrier, are tarred for their pursuit, in places such as Wisconsin, of cool, underground (and highly profitable) springwater in quantities so vast as to prove devastating to the ecology of nearby rivers. The gold-mining industry is called to account for "dewatering" operations in, for example, Nevada, where it makes way for its deep operations by pumping away groundwater at a stunning rate. And planners in Tampa, Fla., and San Antonio, Tex., come under fire for their cavalier reliance on perishable underground sources such as Texas's Edwards Aquifer to fuel development they are finding difficult to sustain. The cumulative picture painted by the author is a grim one. Already four states-- Florida, Nebraska, Kansas and Mississippi-- use more groundwater than surface water, and more and more are looking underground to support growing populations. Becoming equally apparent are the consequences in dry rivers, land subsidence, and aquifers drawn down far faster than they can ever be recharged.
"The country cannot sustain even the current levels of groundwater use," Glennon writes, "never mind the projected increases in groundwater consumption over the next two decades." Why is it that groundwater has become subject to such abuse? One reason, of course, is that buried below the surface, it is hidden from the kind of relentless monitoring that in recent decades has helped clean up rivers such as the Erie and the Hudson. But Glennon, a professor of law at the University of Arizona, finds buried in the law some further reasons for the neglect. Even now, he says, most American laws affecting groundwater do not recognize any connection between underground and surface waters, despite abundant evidence of such links.
They remain rooted in 19th-century ideas that underground flows were something so mysterious that they could not be understood, an assumption that has been translated into lax or nonexistent regulation. In most parts of the U.S., the author points out, surface water is subject to doctrines of riparian law or prior appropriation, with water rights carefully parceled out to various claimants. Groundwater, in contrast, is most often subject to the rule of capture, which, as Glennon observes, essentially means that "the biggest pump wins," notwithstanding the impact on surface water or the aquifer itself. To Glennon, the plight of the country's groundwater has come increasingly to represent what biologist Garrett Hardin called "the tragedy of the commons," a direct result of allowing citizens unlimited use of a common area.
Among his recommendations for the future is an immediate halt to unregulated groundwater pumping. To some ears, especially those of high-plains Texas farmers, that is certain to sound like an unconscionable assault on property rights. But Water Follies makes the case that groundwater is something that we all should regard as very public indeed
Douglas Jehl, a reporter for the New York Times, writes frequently on water issues for that publication.
Cadillac Desert
The American West and its Disappearing Water
By Mark Reisner
From Publishers Weekly
In this stunning work of history and investigative journalism, Reisner tells the story of conflicts over water policy in the West and the resulting damage to the land, wildlife and Indians.
PW stated that this "timely and important book should be required reading for all citizens."
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Tapped Out
The Coming World Crisis in Water And What We Can Do About It
By Dr. Paul Simon
From Publishers Weekly
Simon, a former Democratic senator from Illinois, delivers a call-to-arms to citizens and political leaders to act to save the world's water supply. "Within a few years," he writes, "a water crisis of catastrophic proportions will explode on us." Simon, who was a newspaperman before he was a politician, is a clear and forceful writer who makes use of compelling statistics to outline the looming crisis: 9500 children die every day due to thirst or polluted water and a projected three billion people will be living in regions afflicted by severe water shortages in just 25 years.
Among the most immediate problems Simon covers are vanishing groundwater reserves in California, polluted drinking water in India and the potential for geopolitical violence in the arid Middle East. Simon urges governments to step up their support for desalination, conservation and pollution control. He also calls for policy changes such as charging consumers for the actual cost of conveying their water. Although suffering from a drought of firsthand vignettes and individual case studies, Simon's book is well reasoned and well researched and deserves serious attention?not least because he offers the bracing example of a former public servant still committed to the intelligent and informed discussion of a pressing issue. First serial to Parade.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Mountain Islands and Desert Seas
A Natural History of the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands
By Frederick R. Gehlbach
From Library Journal
In this 1981 volume, Gehlbach relates 26 years of personal discovery and research into the area extending from the lower Rio Grande to the Sonoran Desert. His aim, said LJ 's reviewer, is 'to foster conservation of the unparalleled natural diversity of the Borderlands," which he "ably achieves" ( LJ 12/1/81). Illustrated with 66 color and 36 black-and-white photographs, this remains a solid choice for environmental collections.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"A first-rate natural history of the entire U.S.-Mexican border area.... [The reader] may profit greatly from the author's readable style and his sense of what is environmentally appropriate." - Sierra "... a book to be savored and pondered.... a great service to a very special land." - John Tveten, Houston Chronicle "... deeply rewarding reading for those even mildly interested in the environment and the region from the south of the Rio Grande to California's Imperial Valley." - Arizona Highways"
