selsox

There were two unsatisfying elements about this book. First, its immense scope and hundreds of characters made it difficult to extract a coherent message or course of action. Second, the fact that it was first published over twenty years ago weakens one of its greatest assets -- the staggering amount of research that went into the book. I'm on the hunt for an article by Marc Reisner distilling the main message of the book into twenty pages, and updating the most important facts and figures for the twenty-first century. (Does 80% of water use in California still go to agriculture? Does California still spend as much water irrigating pasture for cattle as it does for all of Los Angeles? That was true in 1983, and I have no idea whether it is today.) Those two issues aside, I don't think there's been a better book written about water and dam building in America -- developments that made possible the lives lived today by nearly everyone west of the Mississippi. Reisner captures the the scope of human achievement involved in exploring America's rivers, constructing dams, and turning western deserts into a source of agricultural wealth; the hubris involved in thinking we can twist nature infinitely to suit human needs; the dirty politics of industrial agriculture, engineering firms and lawmakers collaborating to build economically unviable projects at taxpayer expense; and the environmental damage wrought by damming nearly all free-flowing rivers in the U.S., unsustainably farming marginal soil, destroying fisheries, exhausting tens of thousands of years of groundwater resources, and filling poorly drained farmland inexorably with salts. If you're only casually interested in the topic, I recommend reading the first two and the last two chapters. If you're seriously interested, reading this book is a pretty significant project, but I think you'll find it a stellar and awe-inspiring introduction to water issues that will change the way you look at water, agriculture, and the American West.

2023-07-30 16:06