Blue Revolution
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Americans see water as abundant and cheap: we turn on the faucet and out it gushes, for less than a penny a gallon. We use more water than any other culture in the world, much to quench what's now our largest crop--the lawn. Yet most Americans cannot name the river or aquifer that flows to our taps, irrigates our food, and produces our electricity. And most don't realize these freshwater sources are in deep trouble.
Blue Revolution exposes the truth about the water crisis--driven not as much by lawn sprinklers as by a tradition that has encouraged everyone, from homeowners to farmers to utilities, to tap more and more. But the book also offers much reason for hope. Award-winning journalist Cynthia Barnett argues that the best solution is also the simplest and least expensive: a water ethic for America. Just as the green movement helped build awareness about energy and sustainability, so a blue movement will reconnect Americans to their water, helping us value and conserve our most life-giving resource. Avoiding past mistakes, living within our water means, and turning to "local water" as we do local foods are all part of this new, blue revolution.
Reporting from across the country and around the globe, Barnett shows how people, businesses, and governments have come together to dramatically reduce water use and reverse the water crisis. Entire metro areas, such as San Antonio, Texas, have halved per capita water use. Singapore's "closed water loop" recycles every drop. New technologies can slash agricultural irrigation in half: businesses can save a lot of water--and a lot of money--with designs as simple as recycling air-conditioning condensate.
The first book to call for a national water ethic, Blue Revolution is also a powerful meditation on water and community in America.
Downriver
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The Green River, the most significant tributary of the Colorado River, runs 730 miles and has been stopped up by dams, slaked off by irrigation, and dried up by cities. Former raft guide and environmental reporter Heather Hansman paddles the river from source to confluence to see what the experience might teach her about the present and future of water in the West.
Finding the River: an environmental history of the Elwha
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In 1992 landmark federal legislation called for the removal of two dams from the Elwha River to restore salmon runs. Jeff Crane dives into the debate over development and ecological preservation in Finding the River, presenting a long-term environmental and human history of the river as well as a unique look at river reconstruction.
Finding the River examines the ways that different communities--from the Lower Elwha Klallam Indians to current-day residents--have used the river and its resources, giving close attention to the harnessing of the Elwha for hydroelectric production and the resulting decline of its fisheries. Jeff Crane describes efforts begun in the 1980s to remove the dams and restore the salmon. He explores the rise of a river restoration movement in the late twentieth century and the roles that free-flowing rivers could play in preserving salmon as global warming presents another set of threats to these endangered fish.
A significant and timely contribution to American Western and environmental history--removal of the two Elwha River dams is scheduled to begin in September 2011-- Finding the River will be of interest to historians, to environmentalists, and to fisheries biologists, as well as to general readers interested in the Puget Sound and Olympic Peninsula and environmental issues
A Great Aridness: climate change and the future of the American Southwest
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With its soaring azure sky and stark landscapes, the American Southwest is one of the most hauntingly beautiful regions on earth. Yet staggering population growth, combined with the intensifying effects of climate change, is driving the oasis-based society close to the brink of a Dust-Bowl-scale catastrophe.
In A Great Aridness, William deBuys paints a compelling picture of what the Southwest might look like when the heat turns up and the water runs out. This semi-arid land, vulnerable to water shortages, rising temperatures, wildfires, and a host of other environmental challenges, is poised to bear the heaviest consequences of global environmental change in the United States. Examining interrelated factors such as vanishing wildlife, forest die backs, and the over-allocation of the already stressed Colorado River--upon which nearly 30 million people depend--the author narrates the landscape's history--and future. He tells the inspiring stories of the climatologists and others who are helping untangle the complex, interlocking causes and effects of global warming. And while the fate of this region may seem at first blush to be of merely local interest, what happens in the Southwest, deBuys suggests, will provide a glimpse of what other mid-latitude arid lands worldwide--the Mediterranean Basin, southern Africa, and the Middle East--will experience in the coming years.
Written with an elegance that recalls the prose of John McPhee and Wallace Stegner, A Great Aridness offers an unflinching look at the dramatic effects of climate change occurring right now in our own backyard.
Last Oasis: facing water scarcity
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We have taken for granted seemingly endless supplies of water flowing from reservoirs wells, and diversion projects; access to water has been key to food security, industrialization, and the growth of cities. In this book from the Worldwatch Institute, Sandra Postel explains that decades of profligacy and mismanagement of the world's water resources have produced signs of shortages and environmental destruction. She writes with authority and clarity of the limits-ecological, economic, and political-of this vital natural resource. She explores the potential for conflict over water between nations, and between urban and rural residents. And she offers a sensible way out of such struggles. Last Oasis makes clear that the technologies and know-how exist to increase the productivity of every liter of water. But citizens must first understand the issues and insist on policies, laws, and institutions that promote the sustainable use of water.
River Basins of the American West: a High country news reader
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This companion volume to Water in the 21st-Century West examines water issues through the lens of major Western U.S. watersheds. From the pages of High Country News, the voice of Western environmental issues, River Basins of the American West explores why water has been, and remains, the West's most essential and controversial subject. Editor Char Miller has organized writings into sections defined by the great watersheds of the West-the Colorado River, the Rio Grande, the Columbia River, the Klamath River, and the Missouri River. Arguably, these drainage systems form the real boundaries of the West, and current water conflicts have their roots in development that ignored this reality. Contributors to the book-among them activists, scholars, scientists, and some of the nation's finest environmental journalists-probe the intense differences and disagreements over water rights across the West, and explore the positive developments toward a lasting solution to the most fraught issue the West faces. Like Water in the 21st-Century West, River Basins of the American West is an essential primer in assessing and mapping the West's water future.
Sustainable Water Management in Smallholder Farming
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Key concepts -- Objectives of water management in agriculture -- Soil and water -- Plants and water -- Climate outlook -- Soil water conservation / reducing water loss -- Rainwater harvesting -- Using available water wisely -- Conservation agriculture -- Irrigation methods -- Irrigation scheduling -- Water sources for agriculture.
Taking on Water
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When Wendy Pabich received a monthly water bill for 30,000 gallons (for a household of two people and one dog), she was chagrined. After all, she is an expert on sustainable water use. So she set out to make a change. Taking on Water is the story of the author's personal quest to extract and implement, from a dizzying soup of data and analysis, day-to-day solutions to reduce water use in her life. She sets out to examine the water footprint of the products she consumes, process her own wastewater onsite, revamp the water and energy systems in her home, and make appropriate choices in order to swim the swim. Part memoir, part investigation, part solution manual, the book is filled with ruminations on philosophy, science, facts, figures, and personal behavioral insights; metrics, both serious and humorous, to track progress; and guidelines for the general public for making small (or perhaps monumental) but important changes in their own lives. Told with humor and grace, Taking on Water offers a raw account of how deep we need to dig to change our wasteful ways.
Tapped Out
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Former Senator Paul Simon delivers stirring eveidence of a catastrophic water crisis which will explode upon the global community unless drastic measures are taken in all corners of the world, including in our own backyards.
Water
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This striking volume delivers contemporary perspectives on water as a resource, with the majority of the material reflecting stances of countries other than the United States. Essays are assembled across four chapters that explain the state of our oceans, how we are managing water scarcity, how various cultures are trying to access safe water, and hydropower. Essay contributors include the HM Government, Department of Energy and Climate Change, The Economist, Integrated Regional Information Networks News, Zhou Jigang, Peng Guangcan, Kieran R. Hickey, and Mae-Wan Ho.
Water : the fate of our most precious resource
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WATER is an eloquent and thought-provoking look at our most precious resource, the source of all life and its nurturer. The presence of water has permitted the development of many great civilizations; its absence (sometimes its shockingly sudden absence) has meant the death of many others. From ancient times, when humans huddled close to water sources, to the present, when we use water resources recklessly and profligately (for instance, luxuriously watering golf courses in the Nevada desert), water has been as vital as air. But now the global supply is running up against the ever-increasing demands made by burgeoning populations, the uses and misuses of water are becoming the subject of urgent study, and the potential for conflict is growing as nations reach the limits of their resources.
Water in the 21st-Century West: a High country news reader
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Water in the 21st-Century West offers a timely look at the central issue facing the American Westthe regions diminishing water supply. It collects the best reporting on the subject, drawn from the pages of High Country News, the newspaper that sets the standard for coverage of environmental issues in the West. This book provides compelling perspectives on the water issues and controversies that roil the region, from the Pacific Northwest to the Great Plains, from the interior mountains to the southwestern deserts. The books contributorsamong them activists, scholars, scientists, and many of the nations finest environmental journalistsoffer hardhitting analyses of regional dilemmas, including the unpredictable impact of climate change; intense debates over decommissioning dams; emerging Native American water power; toxic threats to groundwater quality; and the escalating urban demands for water in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Denver, Salt Lake City, and the Bay Area. Water in the 21st-Century West captures the range and nature of the arguments that have defined water politics in the region over the past decade. The collection probes the issues and explores creative attempts to find solutions, bringing a focus and clarity to the most contentious environmental issue the West faces. Water in the 21st-Century West will be an essential primer in assessing and mapping the Wests water future.
Water Resources Planning and Management
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Where the Water Goes
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The Colorado River is a crucial resource for a surprisingly large part of the United States, and every gallon that flows down it is owned or claimed by someone. David Owen traces all that water from the Colorado's headwaters to its parched terminus, once a verdant wetland but now a million-acre desert. He takes readers on an adventure downriver, along a labyrinth of waterways, reservoirs, power plants, farms, fracking sites, ghost towns, and RV parks, to the spot near the U.S.-Mexico border where the river runs dry. Water problems in the western United States can seem tantalizingly easy to solve- just turn off the fountains at the Bellagio, stop selling hay to China, ban golf, cut down the almond trees, and kill all the lawyers. But a closer look reveals a vast man-made ecosystem that is far more complex and more interesting than the headlines let on. The story Owen tells in Where the Water Goes is crucial to our future- how a patchwork of engineering marvels, byzantine legal agreements, aging infrastructure, and neighborly cooperation enables life to flourish in the desert, and the disastrous consequences we face when any part of this tenuous system fails.
Will the World Run out of Fresh Water?
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Introduction -- There is a looming global fresh water shortage / Paul Alois -- People must learn not to take water for granted / Charles Fishman -- Desalination is part of the solution to fresh water shortages / McKinley Conway -- Desalination is too expensive to be a solution to fresh water shortages / Kris De Decker -- Desalination threatens the environment and public health / Food & water watch -- Human ingenuity will eventually solve the looming fresh water shortage / Brian Fagan -- Fresh water is becoming a privatized commodity instead of a public trust / Jeneen Interlandi with Ryan Tracy -- Fresh water should be treated as a commodity / Peter Brabeck-Letmathe -- Fresh water should be treated as a human right / Maude Barlow -- Access to fresh water may spark conflict in the Middle East / Daniel Darling -- Access to fresh water is a contentious issue in the Israel-Palestine conflict / Wilson Dizard -- Middle Eastern governments must increase fresh water conservation / Jon B. Alterman and Michael Dziuban -- Fresh water access can present opportunities for international cooperation / Karin R. Bencala and Geoffrey D. Dabelko -- Organizations to contact -- Bibliography -- Index.
Balancing Water
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The Klamath Basin is a land of teeming wildlife, expansive marshes, blue-ribbon trout streams, tremendous stretches of forests, and large ranches in southern Oregon and northern California. Known to waterfowl, songbirds, and shorebirds, the Klamath Basin's marshlands are a mecca for birds along the Pacific Flyway. This gorgeously illustrated book is a paean to the beauty of the Klamath Basin and at the same time a sophisticated environmental case study of an endangered region whose story parallels that of watershed development throughout the west. A collaboration between two photographers and a writer, Balancing Water tells the story in words and pictures of the complex relationship between the human and natural history of this region. Spectacular images by Tupper Ansel Blake depict resident species of the area, migratory birds, and dramatic landscapes. Madeleine Graham Blake has contributed portraits of local residents, while archival photographs document the history of the area. William Kittredge's essay on the conjunction of conflicting interests in this wildlands paradise is by turns lyrically personal and brimming with historical and scientific facts. He traces the water flowing through the Klamath Basin, the human history of the watershed, and the land-use conflicts that all touch on the availability of water. Ranchers, loggers, town settlers, Native Americans, tourists, and environmentalists are all represented in the narrative, and their diverse perspectives form a complicated web like that of the interactions among organisms in the ecosystem. Kittredge finds hope in the endangered Klamath Basin, both in successful restoration projects recently begun there, and in the community involvement he sees as necessary for watershed restoration and biodiversity preservation. Emphasizing that we must take care of both human economies and the natural environment, he shows how the two are ultimately interconnected. The Klamath Basin can be a model for watershed restoration elsewhere in the west, as we search for creative ways of solving our intertwined ecological and social problems.
Drought and the Human Story
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Drought has been a long companion in the human story. Mythologised as the devastating Bull of Heaven in one of the earliest heroic legends to come out of Mesapotamia, drought has continued to wreak havoc upon societies, in many cases playing a significant role in their final demise. For societies in the 21st Century drought hovers on all horizons, the ultimate drought-proofing of society - long sought - remains elusive. This study of the human conceptualization of drought in a global setting examines the historical record from early human society through to present day concerns to explore how and why attitudes to drought have changed and why the mitigation of its impacts has become more difficult. To offer a more lasting strategy for protection against drought, the author argues that physical scientists need to combine their skills in understanding global ecology and their technological expertise with the social scientists' awareness of the socio-economic, political and cultural contexts in which modern societies operate. Both will have to ensure that their cooperative strategies for drought management will be understood and supported by the public. If this cooperation can be achieved, the future rampages of the Bull of Heaven may be contained.
Liquid Assets
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A one-liner considers more demographic and local water-availability factors than most reports linking demography to water resources. It focuses on conditions in developing countries, where these factors intersect with the fewest socioeconomic resources to mediate. In a 450-character abstract most writings linking demographic trends to water availability often look only at population-growth effects, treating water supplies as static and population as increasing, inexorably leading to a water-availability crisis. This report's more holistic view of the interaction between demographics and water resources considers more demographic and local water-availability variables. It focuses on conditions in developing countries, where these factors intersect with the fewest socioeconomic resources to mediate.
Water for Life: Making It Happen
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Every day, diarrhoeal diseases from easily preventable causes claim the lives of approximately 5 000 young children throughout the world. Sufficient and better quality drinking water and basic sanitation can cut this toll dramatically, and simple, low-cost household water treatment has the potential to save further lives. As we enter the International Decade for Action Water for Life 2005 2015, this report makes clear that achieving the target of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation will bring a payback worth many times the investment involved. It will also bring health, dignity and transformed lives to many millions of the world s poorest people. The humanitarian case for action is blindingly apparent. The economic case is just as strong.
