A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY
Fabretti's treatise, De aquis et aquaeductibus veteris Romae dissertationes tres, is cited as a matter of course by all later scholars working in the area of Roman topography. Its findings--while updated and supplemented by more recent archaeological efforts--have never been fully superseded. Yet despite its enormous importance and impact on scholarly efforts, the De aquis has never yet been translated from the original Latin. Aqueduct Hunting in the Seventeenth Century provides a full translation of and commentary on Fabretti's writings, making them accessible to a broad audience and carefully assessing their scholarly contributions.
Harry B. Evans offers his reader an introduction to Fabretti and his scholarly world. A complete translation and a commentary that focuses primarily on the topographical problems and Fabretti's contribution to our understanding of them are also provided. Evans also assesses the contributions and corrections of later archaeologists and topographers and places the De aquis in the history of aqueduct studies.
Evans demonstrates that Fabretti's conclusions, while far from definitive, are indeed significant and merit wider attention than they have received to date. This book will appeal to classicists and classical archaeologists, ancient historians, and readers interested in the history of technology, archaeology, and Rome and Italy in the seventeenth century.
Harry B. Evans is Professor of Classics, Fordham University.
India’s global success in the Information Technology industry has also prompted the growth of neoliberalism and the re-emergence of the middle class in contemporary urban areas, such as Bangalore. In her significant study, BITS of Belonging, Simanti Dasgupta shows that this economic shift produces new forms of social inequality while reinforcing older ones. She investigates this economic disparity by looking at IT and water privatization to explain how these otherwise unrelated domains correspond to our thinking about citizenship, governance, and belonging.
Dasgupta’s ethnographic study shows how work and human processes in the IT industry intertwine to meet the market stipulations of the global economy. Meanwhile, in the recasting of water from a public good to a commodity, the middle class insists on a governance and citizenship model based upon market participation. Dasgupta provides a critical analysis of the grassroots activism involved in a contested water project where different classes lay their divergent claims to the city.
Evan Ward explores the rapid development of this region, examining the ways in which regional politics and international relations created a garden in the Mexicali, Yuma, and Imperial Valleys while simultaneously threatening the life of the Colorado River. Tracing the transformation of the delta by irrigated agribusiness through the twentieth century, he draws on untapped archival resources from both sides of the border to offer a new look at one of the world's most contested landscapes.
Border Oasis tells how two very different nations developed the delta into an agricultural oasis at enormous environmental cost. Focusing on the years 1940 to 1975—including the disastrous salinity crisis of the 1960s and 1970s—it combines Mexican, Native American, and U.S. perspectives to demonstrate that the political and diplomatic influences on the delta played as much a part in the region's transformation as did irrigation. Ward reveals how mistrust among political and economic participants has been fueled by conflict between national and local officials on both sides of the border, by Mexican nationalism, and by a mutual recognition that water is the critical ingredient for regional economic development.
With overemphasis on development in both nations leading to an ecological breaking point, Ward demonstrates that conflicting interests have made sound binational management of the delta nearly impossible. By weaving together all of these threads that have produced the fabric of today's lower Colorado, his study shows that the environmental history of the delta must be understood as a whole, not from the standpoint of only one of many competing interests.
Precisely because they lived in a midsize, midwestern city, Columbus residents could learn from the earlier experiences of their counterparts in older, larger coastal metropolises, and then go beyond them. Not having large sunk costs in pre-existing water systems, Columbus residents could, for instance, develop new, world-class, state-of-the-art methods for treating water and sewage, steps essential for urban expansion. Columbus, Ohio explores how city residents approached urban challenges—especially economic and environmental ones—and how they solved them.
Columbus, Ohio: Two Centuries of Business and Environmental Change concludes that scholars and policy makers need to pay much more attention to environmental issues in the shaping of cities, and that they need to look more closely at what midwestern metropolises accomplished, as opposed to simply examining coastal cities.
This is an examination of the broader context for the re-emergence of land reform and resource conflicts in Africa. Efforts to change the race based systems of land ownership and land tenure in Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe have pushed land issues to the forefront of social and economic discourses in Africa. This collection examines the broader context for the re-emergence of land reform and resource conflicts.
The case studies examine the links between identity maintenance, tenurial changes, state intervention, and forms and modes of conflict. The authors emphasize the need for a deeper understanding of local histories, cultures, and motivations if efforts to attain a more just distribution of resources are to succeed. The book contributes to a field that has been developing rapidly in the decade since the publication of Melissa Leach and Robin Mearns' collection The Lie of the Land and Mahmood Mamdani's Citizen and Subject. Those two books started a wide ranging discussion of the political reasons for failed development in Africa, as well as the environmental and natural resource dimensions of that failure.
Using an exploratory and qualitative approach, the book draws on more than ninety-five interviews conducted over three years, revealing the complex relationships people have with water in the Southwest, and prominently features the voices of participants, effectively illustrating multiple perspectives and diverse ways of thinking about and relating to water. Schipper highlights various perspectives—including a water manager making conservation decisions, a Hopi elder emphasizing our connection to the water cycle, and a ski instructor reflecting on human-made snow—and interweaves personal experiences and reflections on her own relationship with water and conservation efforts.
Conservation Is Not Enough encourages readers to reflect on their personal connections to water and consider new possibilities, and it also urges readers to think beyond conventional conservation approaches. This book helps to transform the collective approach to water and cultivate fresh ways of engaging with and relating to water and is of great interest to scholars, students, and residents concerned with water issues in the Colorado River Basin.
-From the conclusion
The Colorado River is a vital resource to urban and agricultural communities across the Southwest, providing water to 30 million people. Contested Waters tells the river's story-a story of conquest, control, division, and depletion.
Beginning in prehistory and continuing into the present day, Contested Waters focuses on three important and often overlooked aspects of the river's use: the role of western water law in its over-allocation, the complexity of power relationships surrounding the river, and the concept of sustainable use and how it has been either ignored or applied in recent times. It is organized in two parts, the first addresses the chronological history of the river and long-term issues, while the second examines in more detail four specific topics: metropolitan perceptions, American Indian water rights, US-Mexico relations over the river, and water marketing issues. Creating a complete picture of the evolution of this crucial yet over-utilized resource, this comprehensive summary will fascinate anyone interested in the Colorado River or the environmental history of the Southwest.
In 1923, America paid close attention, via special radio broadcasts, newspaper headlines, and cover stories in popular magazines, as a government party descended the Colorado to survey Grand Canyon. Fifty years after John Wesley Powell's journey, the canyon still had an aura of mystery and extreme danger. At one point, the party was thought lost in a flood.
Something important besides adventure was going on. Led by Claude Birdseye and including colorful characters such as early river-runner Emery Kolb, popular writer Lewis Freeman, and hydraulic engineer Eugene La Rue, the expedition not only made the first accurate survey of the river gorge but sought to decide the canyon's fate. The primary goal was to determine the best places to dam the Grand. With Boulder Dam not yet built, the USGS, especially La Rue, contested with the Bureau of Reclamation over how best to develop the Colorado River. The survey party played a major role in what was known and thought about Grand Canyon.
The authors weave a narrative from the party's firsthand accounts and frame it with a thorough history of water politics and development and the Colorado River. The recommended dams were not built, but the survey both provided base data that stood the test of time and helped define Grand Canyon in the popular imagination.
Also by Robert Webb: Lee's Ferry
Winner, Book Prize in Latin American Studies, Colonial Section of Latin American Studies Association (LASA), 2016
ALAA Book Award, Association for Latin American Art/Arvey Foundation, 2016
The capital of the Aztec empire, Tenochtitlan, was, in its era, one of the largest cities in the world. Built on an island in the middle of a shallow lake, its population numbered perhaps 150,000, with another 350,000 people in the urban network clustered around the lake shores. In 1521, at the height of Tenochtitlan’s power, which extended over much of Central Mexico, Hernando Cortés and his followers conquered the city. Cortés boasted to King Charles V of Spain that Tenochtitlan was “destroyed and razed to the ground.” But was it?
Drawing on period representations of the city in sculptures, texts, and maps, The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City builds a convincing case that this global capital remained, through the sixteenth century, very much an Amerindian city. Barbara E. Mundy foregrounds the role the city’s indigenous peoples, the Nahua, played in shaping Mexico City through the construction of permanent architecture and engagement in ceremonial actions. She demonstrates that the Aztec ruling elites, who retained power even after the conquest, were instrumental in building and then rebuilding the city. Mundy shows how the Nahua entered into mutually advantageous alliances with the Franciscans to maintain the city's sacred nodes. She also focuses on the practical and symbolic role of the city’s extraordinary waterworks—the product of a massive ecological manipulation begun in the fifteenth century—to reveal how the Nahua struggled to maintain control of water resources in early Mexico City.
The Green River, the most significant tributary of the Colorado River, runs 730 miles from the glaciers of Wyoming to the desert canyons of Utah. Over its course, it meanders through ranches, cities, national parks, endangered fish habitats, and some of the most significant natural gas fields in the country, as it provides water for 33 million people. Stopped up by dams, slaked off by irrigation, and dried up by cities, the Green is crucial, overused, and at-risk, now more than ever.
Fights over the river’s water, and what’s going to happen to it in the future, are longstanding, intractable, and only getting worse as the West gets hotter and drier and more people depend on the river with each passing year. As a former raft guide and an environmental reporter, Heather Hansman knew these fights were happening, but she felt driven to see them from a different perspective—from the river itself. So she set out on a journey, in a one-person inflatable pack raft, to paddle the river from source to confluence and see what the experience might teach her. Mixing lyrical accounts of quiet paddling through breathtaking beauty with nights spent camping solo and lively discussions with farmers, city officials, and other people met along the way, Downriver is the story of that journey, a foray into the present—and future—of water in the West.
The four works selected (Animal Dreams, The Monkey Wrench Gang, The Grapes of Wrath, and The Ford) present a composite portrait of reclamation, which the author argues is one of the most important cultural and ecological phenomena in the nation's history. The tensions and contradictions presented by the novels underscore the compelling need for an ecocritique of the relationship between literature and politics. David N. Cassuto deciphers the myths of reclamation and restoration and presents a third alternative--sustainability--in their stead. The challenge is a large one, because of the size and complexity of the region and because nature continues to evolve and create itself, a process involving language, ideology, and the land.
The book is designed to be an interdisciplinary contribution both to the emerging field of literature and the environment, as well as to environmental studies. It will be welcomed by scholars as well as general readers interested in new approaches to literature and environmental issues, and by those interested in the geography and literature of the western United States.
David N. Cassuto, formerly of the English Department of the University of Missouri-Rolla, is a practicing attorney in San Francisco, specializing in environmental issues.
Seventeen contributors—representing history, geography, ethnography, political science, law, and urban studies—provide an interdisciplinary perspective on the many dimensions of water in the West: Spanish colonial water law, Native American water rights, agricultural concerns, and dam building. A concluding essay looks toward the future by examining the impact of cities on water and of water marketing on the western economy.
As farmers and ranchers from Kansas to California compete for water with powerful urban economies, the West will continue to be reshaped by this scarce and precious resource. Fluid Arguments clearly shows that many of the current disputes over water take place without a real appreciation for the long history of the debate. By shedding new light on how water allocation is established—and who controls it—this book makes a vital contribution to our understanding of water and growth in the region.
CONTENTS
Divining the Past: An Introduction / Char Miller
Part 1. Land and Water on New Spain’s Frontiers
1. "Only Fit for Raising Stock": Spanish and Mexican Land and Water Rights in the Tamaulipan Cession / Jesús F. de la Teja
2. Water, the Gila River Pimas, and the Arrival of the Spanish / Shelly C. Dudley
3. "Between This River and That": Establishing Water Rights in the Chama Basin of New Mexico / Sandra K. Mathews-Lamb
Part 2. The Native American Struggle for Water
4. Maggot Creek and Other Tales: Kiowa Identity and Water, 1870-1920 / Bonnie Lynn-Sherow
5. The Dilemmas of Indian Water Policy, 1887-1928 / Donald J. Pisani
6. First in Time: Tribal Reserved Water Rights and General Adjudications in New Mexico / Alan S. Newell
7. Winters Comes Home to Roost / Daniel McCool
Part 3. Agricultural Conundrums
8. Water, Sun, and Cattle: The Chisholm Trail as an Ephemeral Ecosystem / James E. Sherow
9. Private Irrigation in Colorado’s Grand Valley / Brad F. Raley
10. A Rio Grande "Brew": Agriculture, Industry, and Water Quality in the Lower Rio Grande Valley / John P. Tiefenbacher
11. Specialization and Diversification in the Agricultural System of Southwestern Kansas, 1887-1980 / Thomas C. Schafer
12. John Wesley Powell Was Right: Resizing the Ogallala High Plains / John Opie
Part 4. Dam those Waters!
13. Private Initiative, Public Works: Ed Fletcher, the Santa Fe Railway, and Phoenix’s Cave Creek Flood Control Dam / Donald C. Jackson
14. The Changing Fortunes of the Big Dam Era in the American West / Mark Harvey
15. Building Dams and Damning People in the Texas-Mexico Border Region: Mexico’s El Cuchillo Dam Project / Raúl M. Sánchez
Part 5. The Coming Fight
16. Water and the Western Service Economy: A New Challenge / Hal K. Rothman
Maria Lane’s Fluid Geographies traces New Mexico’s transition from a community-based to an expert-led system of water management during the pre-statehood era. To understand this major shift, Lane carefully examines the primary conflict of the time, which pitted Indigenous and Nuevomexicano communities, with their long-established systems of irrigation management, against Anglo-American settlers, who benefitted from centralized bureaucratic management of water. The newcomers’ system eventually became settled law, but water disputes have continued throughout the district courts of New Mexico’s Rio Grande watershed ever since.
Using a fine-grained analysis of legislative texts and nearly two hundred district court cases, Lane analyzes evolving cultural patterns and attitudes toward water use and management in a pivotal time in New Mexico’s history. Illuminating complex themes for a general audience, Fluid Geographies helps readers understand how settler colonialism constructed a racialized understanding of scientific expertise and legitimized the dispossession of nonwhite communities in New Mexico.
During the nineteenth century, upstream diversions from the Gila River decreased the arable land on the Gila River Indian Reservation to only a few thousand acres. As a result the Pima Indians, primarily an agricultural people, fell into poverty. Many Pima farmers and leaders lamented this suffering and in 1914 the United States Indian Irrigation Service assigned a 33-year-old engineer named Clay “Charles” Southworth to oversee the Gila River adjudication. As part of that process, Southworth interviewed 34 Pima elders, thus putting a face on the depth of hardships facing many Indians in the late nineteenth century.
Fuel for Growth describes and interprets the history of water resource development and its relationship to urban development in Arizona's three signature cities: Phoenix, Tucson, and Flagstaff. These three urban areas could hardly be more different: a growth-oriented metropolis, an environmentally conscious city with deep cultural roots, and an outdoor-friendly mountain town. Despite these differences, their community leaders and public officials have taken similar approaches to developing water resources with varying degrees of success and acceptance.
Douglas Kupel has created a new vision of water history based on the Arizona experience. He challenges many of the traditional assumptions of environmental history by revealing that the West's aridity has had relatively little impact on the development of municipal water infrastructure in these cities. While urban growth in the West is often characterized as the product of an elite group of water leaders, the development of Arizona's cities is shown to reflect the broad aspirations of all their citizens.
The book traces water development from the era of private water service to municipal ownership of water utilities and examines the impact of the post-World War II boom and subsequent expansion. Taking in the Salt River Project, the Central Arizona Project, and the Groundwater Management Act of 1980, Kupel explores the ongoing struggle between growth and environmentalism. He advocates public policy measures that can sustain a water future for the state.
As the urban West enters a new century of water management, Arizona's progress will increasingly be tied to that of its ever-expanding cities. Fuel for Growth documents an earlier era of urban water use and provides important recommendations for the future path of water development in the West's key population centers.
For Golden Rules, Mark Kanazawa draws on previously untapped historical sources to trace the emergence of the current framework for resolving water-rights issues to California in the 1850s, when Gold Rush miners flooded the newly formed state. The need to circumscribe water use on private property in support of broader societal objectives brought to light a number of fundamental issues about how water rights ought to be defined and enforced through a system of laws. Many of these issues reverberate in today’s contentious debates about the relative merits of government and market regulation. By understanding how these laws developed across California’s mining camps and common-law courts, we can also gain a better sense of the challenges associated with adopting new property-rights regimes in the twenty-first century.
In essays that combine memoir with biography of place, Kevin Holdsworth creates a public history of the land he calls home: Good Water, Utah. The high desert of south-central Utah is at the heart of the stories he tells here—about the people, the “survivors and casualties” of the small, remote town—and is at the heart of his own story.
Holdsworth also explores history at a personal level: how Native American history is preserved by local park officials; how Mormon settlers adapted to remote, rugged places; how small communities attract and retain those less likely to thrive closer to population centers; and how he became involved in local politics. He confronts the issues of land use and misuse in the West, from the lack of water to greed and corruption over natural resources, but also considers life’s simple pleasures like the value of scenery and the importance of occasionally tossing a horseshoe.
Good Water’s depiction of modern-day Utah and exploration of friendships and bonding on the Western landscape will fascinate and entice readers in the West and beyond.
Hydraulic Societies explores the linked themes of water, power, state-building, and hydraulic control. Bringing together a range of ecological, geographical, chronological, and methodological perspectives, the essays in this book address the how humans have long harnessed water and sought to contain its destructive power for political, economic and social ends. Water defines every aspect of life and remains at the center of human activity: in irrigation and agriculture; waste and sanitation; drinking and disease; floods and droughts; religious beliefs and practices; fishing and aquaculture; travel and discovery; scientific study; water pollution and conservation; multi-purpose dam building; boundaries and borders; politics and economic life; and wars and diplomacy.
From the earliest large irrigation works thousands of years ago, control over water has involved control over people, as the essays in this volume reflect. The intersections of water and political, economic, and social power historically span international as well as domestic politics and operate at scales ranging from the local to the global. The authors consider the role of water in national development schemes, water distribution as a tool of political power, international disputes over waterways and water supplies, and the place of water in armed conflicts. They explore the ways in which political power and social hierarchies have themselves been defined and redefined by water and its control, how state leaders legitimized their rule both culturally and economically through the control of water, and how water management schemes were a means to impose and refine colonial power.
Contributors. Nikhil Anand, Andrea Ballestero, Bruce Braun, Ashley Carse, Gastón R. Gordillo, Kregg Hetherington, Casper Bruun Jensen, Joseph Masco, Shaylih Muehlmann, Natasha Myers, Stephanie Wakefield, Austin Zeiderman
A Land Made from Water chronicles how the appropriation and development of water and riparian resources in Colorado changed the face of the Front Range—an area that was once a desert and is now an irrigated oasis suitable for the habitation and support of millions of people. This comprehensive history of human intervention in the Boulder Creek and Lefthand Creek valleys explores the complex interactions between environmental and historical factors to show how thoroughly the environment along the Front Range is a product of human influence.
Author Robert Crifasi examines the events that took place in nineteenth-century Boulder County, Colorado, and set the stage for much of the water development that occurred throughout Colorado and the American West over the following century. Settlers planned and constructed ditches, irrigation systems, and reservoirs; initiated the seminal court decisions establishing the appropriation doctrine; and instigated war to wrest control of the region from the local Native American population. Additionally, Crifasi places these river valleys in the context of a continent-wide historical perspective.
By examining the complex interaction of people and the environment over time, A Land Made from Water links contemporary issues facing Front Range water users to the historical evolution of the current water management system and demonstrates the critical role people have played in creating ecosystems that are often presented to the public as “natural” or “native.” It will appeal to students, scholars, professionals, and general readers interested in water history, water management, water law, environmental management, political ecology, or local natural history.
This book looks at how we got here and what we can and should do next. Laying out the complex arguments surrounding water, its ownership and access to it, Mike Gonzalez and Marianella Yanes make the technical and scientific aspects of the discussion clear and accessible—and thereby enable themselves to make the political questions more urgent. Pushing back against the market fundamentalists, the authors argue that it is both possible and necessary that considerations of equity and social justice prevail in the debates about water. Powerful and polemical, The Last Drop will be a vital resource for water activists worldwide.
Now an expert cast of authors describes, narrates, and explains the human and natural history of this special place in a thorough and readable account. Addressing the latest archaeological and historical findings, they reveal why Tinajas Altas was so important and how it related to other waterholes in the arid borderlands. Readers can feel like pioneers, following in the footsteps of early Native Americans, Spanish priests and soldiers, gold seekers and borderland explorers, tourists, and scholars.
Combining authoritative writing with a rich array of more than 180 illustrations and maps as well as detailed appendixes providing up-to-date information on the wildlife and plants that live in the area, Last Water on the Devil’s Highway allows readers to uncover the secrets of this fascinating place, revealing why it still attracts intrepid tourists and campers today.
“Never before has the case been more compellingly made that America’s dependence on a free and abundant water supply has become an illusion. Cynthia Barnett does it by telling us the stories of the amazing personalities behind our water wars, the stunning contradictions that allow the wettest state to have the most watered lawns, and the thorough research that makes her conclusions inescapable. Barnett has established herself as one of Florida’s best journalists and Mirage is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of the state.”
—Mary Ellen Klas, Capital Bureau Chief, Miami Herald
“Mirage is the finest general study to date of the freshwater-supply crisis in Florida. Well-meaning villains abound in Cynthia Barnett’s story, but so too do heroes, such as Arthur R. Marshall Jr., Nathaniel Reed, and Marjorie Harris Carr. The author’s research is as thorough as her prose is graceful. Drinking water is the new oil. Get used to it.”
—Michael Gannon, Distinguished Professor of history, University of Florida, and author of Florida: A Short History
“With lively prose and a journalist’s eye for a good story, Cynthia Barnett offers a sobering account of water scarcity problems facing Florida—one of our wettest states—and the rest of the East Coast. Drawing on lessons learned from the American West, Mirage uses the lens of cultural attitudes about water use and misuse to plead for reform. Sure to engage and fascinate as it informs.”
—Robert Glennon, Morris K. Udall Professor of Law and Public Policy, University of Arizona, and author of Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America’s Fresh Waters
Part investigative journalism, part environmental history, Mirage reveals how the eastern half of the nation—historically so wet that early settlers predicted it would never even need irrigation—has squandered so much of its abundant freshwater that it now faces shortages and conflicts once unique to the arid West.
Florida’s parched swamps and supersized residential developments set the stage in the first book to call attention to the steady disappearance of freshwater in the American East, from water-diversion threats in the Great Lakes to tapped-out freshwater aquifers along the Atlantic seaboard.
Told through a colorful cast of characters including Walt Disney, Jeb Bush and Texas oilman Boone Pickens, Mirage ferries the reader through the key water-supply issues facing America and the globe: water wars, the politics of development, inequities in the price of water, the bottled-water industry, privatization, and new-water-supply schemes.
From its calamitous opening scene of a sinkhole swallowing a house in Florida to its concluding meditation on the relationship between water and the American character, Mirage is a compelling and timely portrait of the use and abuse of freshwater in an era of rapidly vanishing natural resources.
In contrast to this fantasy of abundance, Sevigny explores acts of restoration. From a dismantled dam in Arizona to an accidental wetland in Mexico, she examines how ecologists, engineers, politicians, and citizens have attempted to secure water for desert ecosystems. In a place scarred by conflict, she shows how recognizing the rights of rivers is a path toward water security. Ultimately, Sevigny writes a new map for the future of the American Southwest, a vision of a society that accepts the desert’s limits in exchange for an intimate relationship with the natural world.
Holocaust denial can be viewed as another form of hatred against the Jews and preventing it can be understood as a form of warding off hate speech. Germany has made it a crime punishable by law. Other European countries have similar laws. While the rationale for such laws seems reasonable, Lewy asks readers to look again and to consider carefully the dangers that these laws could present. His discussion neither dismisses the ramifications of genocide denial nor justifies it; he instead looks closely at the possible risks of government-enforced interpretations of history.
Outlawing genocide denial sets a precedent of allowing governments to dictate historical truth and how events should be interpreted. Such government restrictions can be counterproductive in a democratic society which values freedom of speech. Lewy examines these and related ideas through the analysis of historical and current examples. He posits his own conclusion but leaves it up to readers to view the evidence and arguments and form their own opinions.
Despite Mumbai's position as India's financial, economic, and cultural capital, water is chronically unavailable for rich and poor alike. Mumbai's dry taps are puzzling, given that the city does not lack for either water or financial resources. In Pipe Politics, Contested Waters, Lisa Björkman shows how an elite dream to transform Mumbai into a "world class" business center has wreaked havoc on the city’s water pipes. In rich ethnographic detail, Pipe Politics explores how the everyday work of getting water animates and inhabits a penumbra of infrastructural activity—of business, brokerage, secondary markets, and sociopolitical networks—whose workings are reconfiguring and rescaling political authority in the city. Mumbai’s increasingly illegible and volatile hydrologies, Björkman argues, are lending infrastructures increasing political salience just as actual control over pipes and flows becomes contingent on dispersed and intimate assemblages of knowledge, power, and material authority. These new arenas of contestation reveal the illusory and precarious nature of the project to remake Mumbai in the image of Shanghai or Singapore and gesture instead toward the highly contested futures and democratic possibilities of the actually existing city.
Precolumbian Water Management examines water management from both economic and symbolic perspectives. Water management facilities, settlement patterns, shrines, and water-related imagery associated with civic-ceremonial and residential architecture provide evidence that water systems pervade all aspects of ancient society. Through analysis of such data, the contributors seek to combine an understanding of imagery and the religious aspects of water with its functional components, thereby presenting a unified perspective of how water was conceived, used, and represented in ancient greater Mesoamerica. The collection boasts broad chronological and geographical coverage—from the irrigation networks of Teotihuacan to the use of ritual water technology at Casas Grandes—that shows how procurement and storage systems were adapted to local conditions.
The articles consider the mechanisms that were used to build upon the sacredness of water to enhance political authority through time and space and show that water was not merely an essential natural resource but an important spiritual one as well, and that its manipulation was socially far more complex than might appear at first glance. As these papers reveal, an understanding of materials associated with water can contribute much to the ways that archaeologists study ancient cultural systems. Precolumbian Water Management underscores the importance of water management research and the need to include it in archaeological projects of all types.
Arguing that the science of the early twentieth century can shed new light on the mistakes at the heart of the over-allocation of the Colorado River, authors Eric Kuhn and John Fleck delve into rarely reported early studies, showing that scientists warned as early as the 1920s that there was not enough water for the farms and cities boosters wanted to build. Contrary to a common myth that the authors of the Colorado River Compact did the best they could with limited information, Kuhn and Fleck show that development boosters selectively chose the information needed to support their dreams, ignoring inconvenient science that suggested a more cautious approach.
Today water managers are struggling to come to terms with the mistakes of the past. Focused on both science and policy, Kuhn and Fleck unravel the tangled web that has constructed the current crisis. With key decisions being made now, including negotiations for rules governing how the Colorado River water will be used after 2026, Science Be Dammed offers a clear-eyed path forward by looking back.
Understanding how mistakes were made is crucial to understanding our contemporary problems. Science Be Dammed offers important lessons in the age of climate change about the necessity of seeking out the best science to support the decisions we make.
This economic vitality did not last, however. As immigrants settled upstream from the Pima villages, they deprived the Indians of the water they needed to sustain their economy. DeJong traces federal, territorial, and state policies that ignored Pima water rights even though some policies appeared to encourage Indian agriculture. This is a particularly egregious example of a common story in the West: the flagrant local rejection of Supreme Court rulings that protected Indian water rights. With plentiful maps, tables, and illustrations, DeJong demonstrates that maintaining the spreading farms and growing towns of the increasingly white population led Congress and other government agencies to willfully deny Pimas their water rights.
Had their rights been protected, DeJong argues, Pimas would have had an economy rivaling the local and national economies of the time. Instead of succeeding, the Pima were reduced to cycles of poverty, their lives destroyed by greed and disrespect for the law, as well as legal decisions made for personal gain.
In the 1970s, the three groups most intimately involved in the Orme Dam—younger Bureau of Reclamation employees committed to "rational choice" decision making, older Bureau engineers committed to the dam, and the Yavapai community—all found themselves and their values transformed by their struggles. Wendy Nelson Espeland lays bare the relations between interests and identities that emerged during the conflict, creating a contemporary tale of power and colonization, bureaucracies and democratic practice, that asks the crucial question of what it means to be "rational."
The volume focuses primarily on the Precolumbian Maya but offers several analogous case studies outside the ancient Maya world that illustrate the pervasiveness of water’s role in sustainability, including an ethnographic study of the sustainability of small-scale, farmer-managed irrigation systems in contemporary New Mexico and the environmental consequences of Angkor’s growth into the world’s most extensive preindustrial settlement. The archaeological record offers rich data on past politics of climate change, while epigraphic and ethnographic data show how integrated the ideological, political, and environmental worlds of the Maya were.
While Sustainability and Water Management in the Maya World and Beyond stresses how lessons from the past offer invaluable insight into current approaches of adaptation, it also advances our understanding of those adaptations by making the inevitable discrepancies between past and present climate change less daunting and emphasizing the sustainable negotiations between humans and their surroundings that have been mediated by the changing climate for millennia. It will appeal to students and scholars interested in climate change, sustainability, and water management in the archaeological record.
Contributors: Mary Jane Acuña, Wendy Ashmore, Timothy Beach, Jeffrey Brewer, Christopher Carr, Adrian S. Z. Chase, Arlen F. Chase, Diane Z. Chase, Carlos R. Chiriboga, Jennifer Chmilar, Nicholas Dunning, Maurits W. Ertsen, Roland Fletcher, David Friedel, Robert Griffin, Joel D. Gunn, Armando Anaya Hernández, Christian Isendahl, David Lentz, Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach, Dan Penny, Kathryn Reese-Taylor, Michelle Rich, Cynthia Robin, Sylvia Rodríguez, William Saturno, Vernon Scarborough, Payson Sheets, Liwy Grazioso Sierra, Michael Smyth, Sander van der Leeuw, Andrew Wyatt
As a changing climate threatens the whole country with deeper droughts and more furious floods that put ever more people and property at risk, Texas has become a bellwether state for water debates. Will there be enough water for everyone? Is there the will to take the steps necessary to defend ourselves against the sea? Is it in the nature of Americans to adapt to nature in flux?
The most comprehensive—and comprehensible—book on contemporary water issues, A Thirsty Land delves deep into the challenges faced not just by Texas but by the nation as a whole, as we struggle to find a way to balance the changing forces of nature with our own ever-expanding needs. Part history, part science, part adventure story, and part travelogue, this book puts a human face on the struggle to master that most precious and capricious of resources, water. Seamus McGraw goes to the taproots, talking to farmers, ranchers, businesspeople, and citizen activists, as well as to politicians and government employees. Their stories provide chilling evidence that Texas—and indeed the nation—is not ready for the next devastating drought, the next catastrophic flood. Ultimately, however, A Thirsty Land delivers hope. This deep dive into one of the most vexing challenges facing Texas and the nation offers glimpses of the way forward in the untapped opportunities that water also presents.
Through literary, rhetorical, and historical analysis of some of the Colorado River’s lesser-known stakeholders, Tributary Voices considers a more comprehensive approach to river management on the eve of the one-hundredth anniversary of the signing of the Colorado River Compact, which governs the allocation of water rights to the seven states in the region. Ranging from the early twentieth century to the present, Tributary Voices examines nature writing, women’s narratives, critiques of dam development, the Latina/o communities’ appeals for river restoration, American Indian authors’ and tribal nations’ claims of water sovereignty, and teachings about environmental stewardship and provident living. This innovative study models an interdisciplinary approach to water governance and reinvigorates our imagination in achieving a more sustainable water ethic.
Most of the world’s population lives in cities in developing countries, where access to basic public services, such as water, electricity, and health clinics, is either inadequate or sorely missing. Water and Politics shows how politicians benefit politically from manipulating public service provision for electoral gain. In many young democracies, politicians exchange water service for votes or political support, rewarding allies or punishing political enemies. Surprisingly, the political problem of water provision has become more pronounced, as water service represents a valuable political currency in resource-scarce environments.
Water and Politics finds that middle-class and industrial elites play an important role in generating pressure for public service reforms.
In Water Brings No Harm, Matthew V. Bender explores the history of community water management on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Kilimanjaro’s Chagga-speaking peoples have long managed water by employing diverse knowledge: hydrological, technological, social, cultural, and political. Since the 1850s, they have encountered groups from beyond the mountain—colonial officials, missionaries, settlers, the independent Tanzanian state, development agencies, and climate scientists—who have understood water differently. Drawing on the concept of waterscapes—a term that describes how people “see” water, and how physical water resources intersect with their own beliefs, needs, and expectations—Bender argues that water conflicts should be understood as struggles between competing forms of knowledge.
Water Brings No Harm encourages readers to think about the origins and interpretation of knowledge and development in Africa and the global south. It also speaks to the current global water crisis, proposing a new model for approaching sustainable water development worldwide.
Building on these cultural critiques, Freyfogle takes up the issue of private property rights, highlighting the longstanding flexibility of this key American institution as well as the moral imperative to ensure that property rights aren’t used in ways that harm communities. Outdated understandings about private property, he concludes, have further confused our understanding and made sensible solutions to water problems even harder to imagine. Water-policy reform won’t happen, Freyfogle argues, until we reconsider how we understand nature and take charge of the institution of ownership, recasting it so as to increase the benefits it generates for everyone. If we can do that, solutions to water troubles could prove easier than we expect. The work concludes with an original, sweeping policy proposal to resolve the West’s water shortages and meet environmental needs in ways fair to all.
This lecture was presented on March 22, 2017, at the 22nd annual symposium sponsored by the Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources and the Environment at the S. J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah.
No natural resource issue has greater significance for the future of Texas than water. The state's demand for water for municipal, industrial, agricultural, and recreational uses continues to grow exponentially, while the supply from rivers, lakes, aquifers, and reservoirs is limited. To help Texans manage their water resources today and plan for future needs, one of Texas's top water experts has compiled this authoritative overview of water issues in Texas.
Water in Texas covers all the major themes in water management and conservation:
- Living with a Limited Resource
- The Molecule that Moves Mountains
- A Texas Water Journey
- The Gulf Shores of Texas
- Who's Who in Water
- Texas Water Law: A Blend of Two Cultures
- Does Texas Have Enough Water?
- Planning for the Future
- What's in Your Water?
- How Much is Water Worth?
- Water is Our Legacy
Illustrated with color photographs and maps, Water in Texas will be the essential resource for landowners, citizen activists, policymakers, and city planners.
Finding "streams in the desert" has never been more urgent for the peoples of the Middle East. Rapid population growth and a rising standard of living are driving water demand inexorably upward, while the natural supply has not increased since Biblical times. Ensuring a fair and adequate distribution of water in the region is vitally important for building a lasting peace among the nations of the Middle East.
Addressing water needs from a geographical perspective, the contributors to this book analyze and assess the impact of scarce water resources in the Jordan River basin countries and territories (Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria) as these long-time antagonists work toward peace. After geographical and historical overviews, the authors envision the future-what the water issues may be when Israel and Syria begin negotiating, the "hydro-security" needs of each nation, and the difficulties of planning for uncertainty. Without proposing any one ideal scheme, they discuss the possibilities for cooperative sharing of water resources, while honestly acknowledging the political constraints that may limit such projects. The final essay speaks to the needs of the one party so rarely represented at the negotiating table—the Jordan River itself.
Water Politics in Northern Nevada examines the Newlands Project, its unintended consequences, and decades of litigation over the abatement of these problems and fair allocation of water. Negotiations and federal legislation brought about the Truckee River Operating Agreement in 2008. This revised edition brings the reader up to date on the implementation of the agreement, including ongoing efforts to preserve and enhance Pyramid Lake. The second edition now also includes a discussion of the Walker River basin, following a major project undertaken to address concerns about the health and viability of Walker Lake. The approaches taken to save these two desert treasures, Pyramid Lake and Walker Lake, are offered as models for resolving similar water-resource conflicts in the West.
Leah J. Wilds’s study is crucial reading for students and scholars of water politics and environmental issues, not just in Nevada but throughout the western United States.
As Francis H. Chapelle reveals in this delightful and informative volume, a complex story of geology, hydrology, and history lies behind every bottle of spring water. The book chronicles the history of the bottled water industry in America from its beginnings in Europe hundreds of years ago to the present day. Subsequent chapters describe the chemical characteristics that make some waters desirable, and provide an overview of the geologic circumstances that produce them. Wellsprings explains how these geologic conditions vary throughout the country, and how this affects the kinds and quality of bottled water that are available. Finally, Chapelle shows how the bottled water industry uses this natural history, together with the perceived health benefits of spring waters, to market their products.
Accessibly written and well illustrated, Wellsprings is both a revealing account and a user’s guide to natural spring waters. Regardless of your drinking preference, this timely exploration will make your next drink of water refreshingly informed.
Organized as a collection of terms, the book addresses the most salient water issues and provides helpful background information regarding their origins and implications. Photographs serve a vital role in the cultural dialogue on water and stand as an equal partner to the text. Each subject is covered in about one page and is accompanied by one or two striking images from famous photographers like Margaret Bourke-White, Carleton E. Watkins, Arthur Rothstein, William Henry Jackson, and Dorothea Lang as well as Crifasi’s own work. Water often finds itself at the center of our cultural discourse in art, cinema, and literature, which play essential roles in shaping our understanding and experience of Western water. Crifasi also engages personalities that are nearly synonymous with Western water—John Wesley Powell, Elwood Mead, and Floyd Dominy, among others—to show how their lives intertwined with and often influenced the course of water development across the region.
Travelers, adventurers, students, and anyone interested in water will find Western Water A to Z a handy and entertaining reference guide.
Where fresh water appears to be abundant and generally accessible, chronic pollution may be relatively ignored as a public issue. Yet there are those whose lives, livelihoods, and traditions are touched directly by the destructive albeit essential relationship between humans and water.
In her passionate and persuasively argued Where Rivers Meet the Sea, Stephanie Kane compares two cities and nations—Salvador, Brazil and Buenos Aires, Argentina—as she tells the stories of those who organize in the streets, petition the courts, and challenge their governments to implement and enforce existing laws designed to protect springs, lakes, harbors, and rivers.
Illuminating the complex and distinctive cultural forces in the South Atlantic that shape conflicts and collaborations pertaining to particular waterfront settings, Kane shows the dilemmas, inventiveness, and persistence that provide the foundation for environmental and social justice movements writ large.
Offering a fresh way to think about the Anthropocene, this distinctive history of water and coal in the Lackawanna Valley discusses how both water abundance and scarcity might play out as global temperatures rise. Working Watersheds is designed to trigger debates about the nature of history, the significance of literature, and the importance of linking person, place, and planet in an era of climate change.
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