Where the Water Goes
Where the Water Goes

Author: David Owen

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2017-04-11

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0698189906

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“Wonderfully written…Mr. Owen writes about water, but in these polarized times the lessons he shares spill into other arenas. The world of water rights and wrongs along the Colorado River offers hope for other problems.” —Wall Street Journal An eye-opening account of where our water comes from and where it all goes. The Colorado River is an essential 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.

The Untold Story of the Lower Colorado River Authority
The Untold Story of the Lower Colorado River Authority

Author: John Williams

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2016-01-04

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1623493412

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Arguably, no other institution has transformed the heart of Texas like the Lower Colorado River Authority. Born in the Great Depression of the 1930s, LCRA built a chain of dams and brought predictability to the cycles of extreme droughts and floods that had long plagued Austin and other communities. It also brought hydroelectric power—and with that, modern-day civilization—to the hard-scrabble regions of Central and South Texas. With those achievements, and the support of powerful political leaders like Lyndon Johnson, LCRA for years was touted as one of the state’s major success stories. But LCRA has never been a stranger to controversy, and while it continues to provide much of the energy and water that fuels the economic engine of Austin and beyond, most people know very little about LCRA. In this book, readers will learn about the forces of nature and politics that combined to create LCRA; the colorful personalities who operated, supported, or fought with the agency; its spectacular successes, periodic blunders, and occasional failures; and its evolution into one of the largest public power organizations in Texas. To learn more about The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, sponsors of this book's series, please click here.

Where the River Ends
Where the River Ends

Author: Shaylih Muehlmann

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2013-05-23

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 0822354454

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Living in the northwest of Mexico, the Cucapá people have relied on fishing as a means of subsistence for generations, but in the last several decades, that practice has been curtailed by water scarcity and government restrictions. The Colorado River once met the Gulf of California near the village where Shaylih Muehlmann conducted ethnographic research, but now, as a result of a treaty, 90 percent of the water from the Colorado is diverted before it reaches Mexico. The remaining water is increasingly directed to the manufacturing industry in Tijuana and Mexicali. Since 1993, the Mexican government has denied the Cucapá people fishing rights on environmental grounds. While the Cucapá have continued to fish in the Gulf of California, federal inspectors and the Mexican military are pressuring them to stop. The government maintains that the Cucapá are not sufficiently "indigenous" to warrant preferred fishing rights. Like many indigenous people in Mexico, most Cucapá people no longer speak their indigenous language; they are highly integrated into nonindigenous social networks. Where the River Ends is a moving look at how the Cucapá people have experienced and responded to the diversion of the Colorado River and the Mexican state's attempts to regulate the environmental crisis that followed.

The Colorado River Through Glen Canyon Before Lake Powell
The Colorado River Through Glen Canyon Before Lake Powell

Author: Eleanor Inskip

Publisher:

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 108

ISBN-13:

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River trips through Glen Canyon from 1872-1964 were combined beginning at North Wash & ending at Lees Ferry, to present Glen Canyon before the lake. Landscape photographs & quotations from the explorers complete the journal. Fifty photographers & authors are represented. Photographs are identified by photographer, photo date & location. Quotations are identified by author & source. A map of Lake Powell is provided as a guide for today's visitor. The reader can take this book on the lake & go to the buoy indicated to compare Lake Powell today with the Glen Canyon of yesterday. Glen Canyon Natural History Association is co-publishing this book in support of the educational objectives of the National Park Service at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. A Special Limited (1,500 copies) First Edition is available. Silk-bound Limited Edition, $150, Paper-bound Edition, $25. Trade discounts available. Order from Inskip Ink, 366 East 100 North, Moab, UT 84532. Tel. & FAX 801-259-8452 or your local distributor.

Damming Grand Canyon
Damming Grand Canyon

Author: Diane E Boyer

Publisher:

Published: 2007-05-07

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13:

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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