Saving the Earth

Water Resources

The world’s supply of clean fresh water is steadily decreasing as water is used at a faster rate than it can be replenished by rainfall or snowmelt. Water use has grown at twice the rate of population during the past century. The Middle East, North Africa and South Asia are chronically short of water.
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The books recommended in this section highlight the challenge of diminishing water resources  that is facing us as we move into the 21st century. They address issues of water pollution, water quality and water scarcity and offer proposals and guidance for using our Earth’s water wisely.

Recommended Books on Water Resources

Biology of Freshwater Pollution
Christopher Mason

This book is a highly-regarded overview of the subject, providing a current summary of the field covering recent research, case studies and examples. Dr. Mason explains the major types of pollution, describing their sources, their impacts on biological systems and water resources, and methods for mitigating impacts. The final chapter looks at water resource management in the 21st century.
2002, Benjamin Cummings

The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster, and the Water We Drink
Robert D. Morris

In this engrossing and disquieting book, Dr. Morris raises the alarm about hidden perils in our water. He traces the history of the search for water-borne pathogens from the mid-19th century, when doctors discovered the bacterium that causes cholera - the blue death. He explains that our water supply is far from safe: some pathogens elude conventional filters; others are resistant to chlorine; and chlorinated drinking water may increase the risk of certain cancers. Observing that water industry lobbyists typically resist regulatory efforts, Morris argues persuasively that unless we do more to protect the water we drink, we court disaster.
2007, HarperCollins

Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
Marc Reisner

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. He describes massive irrigation projects, funded by the U.S. government, that have caused many arid areas to bloom: the cities of Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles and vast areas of farmland are wholly dependent upon water brought at great cost from long distances. He calls attention to the long-term despoilation of agricultural soil through concentration of salts - the inevitable result of irrigation. A pioneering book that is still immensely valuable.
1993, Penguin

Clean Water: An Introduction to Water Quality and Pollution Control
Kenneth M. Vigil

In straightforward language Kenneth Vigil provides a comprehensive introduction to the many scientific, regulatory, and geographic issues associated with water quality and water pollution control. Clean Water explains the basic fundamentals of water chemistry and describes the scientific principles behind water pollution control and the broader approach of addressing water pollution problems through watershed management.
2003, Oregon State University Press

Every Drop for Sale: Our Desperate Battle Over Water
Jeffrey Rothfeder

Less than .0008% of the total water on Earth is drinkable, and global consumption of fresh water is doubling every twenty years. Water has become our most precious commodity: a life-sustaining but increasingly rare and privatized resource. In this compelling narrative account of our world in turmoil over water, Rothfeder describes the issues and struggles of the people on all sides of the water crisis: from the survivors of bizarre water-management practices, to those who are willing to die for water to sustain their families and crops, to the scientists and leaders who are trying to set things straight.
2001, Tarcher

Freshwater Ecoregions of North America: A Conservation Assessment
Robin Abell

North America's freshwater habitats and the extraordinary biodiversity they contain are facing unprecedented threats from flow alteration, habitat fragmentation, introduced species, and overall land use changes. This authoritative reference from World Wildlife Fund assesses the current status of freshwater ecoregions and outlines measures that must be taken to conserve and restore native biodiversity.  
1999, Island Press

The Great Lakes Water Wars
Peter Annin

The Great Lakes are the largest collection of fresh surface water on Earth, and more than 40 million Americans and Canadians live in their basin. Will we divert water from the Great Lakes, causing them to end up like Central Asia's Aral Sea, which has lost 90% of its surface area and 75% of its volume since 1960? Peter Annin writes a fast-paced account of the people and stories behind the struggle over unregulated water withdrawals.
2006, Island Press

Killing the Hidden Waters
Charles Bowden

First published in 1977, and with a new up-to-date introduction, Bowden warns of the costs and limits of using water as if it is an infinite resource. He drives home the point that years of droughts, rationing, and even water wars have done nothing to slake the insatiable consumption of water in the American West. Killing the Hidden Waters is, according to Edward Abbey, "the best all-around summary I've read yet, anywhere, of how our greed-driven, ever-expanding urban-industrial empire is consuming, wasting, poisoning, and destroying not only the resource basis of its own existence, but also the vital, sustaining basis of life everywhere."
2003, University of Texas Press

Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity
Sandra Postel

In this book from the Worldwatch Institute, Sandra Postel explains that decades of profligacy and mismanagement of the world's water resources have produced shortages and environmental destruction. She clearly describes the limits - ecological, economic, and political - of this vital natural resource and explores the potential for conflict over water between nations and between urban and rural residents. Last Oasis makes clear that the technologies and know-how exist to increase the productivity of every liter of water - but citizens must insist on policies, laws, and institutions that promote the sustainable use of water.
1997, W. W. Norton

Outgrowing The Earth
Lester R. Brown

The author dramatically details how human demands are outstripping the earth's capacities - and what we need to do about it. Future security, Brown says, depends on raising water productivity, stabilizing climate by moving beyond fossil fuels, and slowing population growth.  
2005, W. W. Norton

Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last? 
Sandra Postel

Pillar of Sand examines the history, challenges, and pitfalls of irrigated agriculture - from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to 20th century India and the U.S. By unmasking the risks faced by irrigation-based societies - including water scarcity, soil salinization, and conflicts over rivers - water specialist Postel connects the lessons of the past with the challenge of making irrigation thrive into the 21st century and beyond. This book points the way toward managing the growing competition for scarce water, and lays out a strategy for bettering the lives of the majority of the world's poorest farmers.
1999, W. W. Norton

Rivers for Life: Managing Water For People And Nature
Sandra Postel and Brian Richter

Postel and Richter explain why restoring and preserving more natural river flows are key to sustaining freshwater biodiversity and healthy river systems, and describe innovative approaches for achieving those goals. They explain the value of healthy rivers to human and ecosystem health; describe the ecological processes that support river ecosystems and how they have been disrupted by dams and diversions; and demonstrate through case studies new and innovative policy approaches to achieve healthy rivers.
2003, Island Press

Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West
Donald Worster

In this impassioned and lyrical book, historian Worster tells the story of how the modern American West is built upon a network of dams, diversions and irrigation canals. Yet the cities and farms, money and power of today's West have come at a high cost. Along with the wealth has come massive ecological damage, a redistribution of power to bureaucratic and economic elites, and a class conflict still on the upswing. As a result, the future of this "hydraulic West" is increasingly uncertain, as water continues to be a scarce resource, inadequate to the demand, and declining in quality. This eloquent and thought-provoking story of the American Empire begins and ends with water.
1992, Oxford University Press

The Secret Knowledge of Water : Discovering the Essence of the American Desert
Craig Childs

In this vivid, hypnotic narrative, naturalist Childs tells of his travels in the deserts of America, in search of random waterholes, rare creeks, waterfalls, springs, shrimp-filled pools and sudden, furious floods. He mingles personal obsrvations with a cosmic perspective: "Most, if not all, water on this planet came from countless small comets thumping against the atmosphere..." By turns travelogue, ecological treatise, and meditative essay, Childs' book will speak to anyone who has spent time under desert skies, wondering when the next drop of rain might fall.
2001, Back Bay Books

Water and the California Dream: Choices for the New Millennium
David Carle

Imported water has transformed the environment of California and its quality of life. In the last 200 years, land ownership patterns have dramatically altered both urban and rural communities. This book argues that the key to this transformation has been access to water from the Eastern Sierra, the Colorado River, and the rivers of northern California. The state's infatuation with limitless growth is coming up against the reality that water is a finite resource. Carle is hopeful that decision-makers can learn from past mistakes, and move towards managing water in a sustainable way.
2003, Sierra Club Books

Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource
Marq de Villiers

A child dies every eight seconds from drinking contaminated water. More than half of the world's rivers are now so polluted that they pose serious health risks. One-third of Africa's people already endure conditions of water scarcity, and water supplies are in jeopardy in China, India, Japan, Spain, southern France, Australia, the southwestern U.S. and many other parts of Asia and Europe. This compelling, highly readable report on the looming global water crisis sounds a wake-up call for concerned citizens, environmentalists and policy-makers.
2001, Mariner Books

Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping And The Fate Of America's Fresh Waters
Robert Jerome Glennon

In the high plains of Texas, farmers are entitled by law to as much underground water as they want to pump. No matter that this water comes from the Ogallala Aquifer, that vast underground reservoir whose levels have dropped precipitously since 1940, threatening to put farmers across seven states out of business. Glennon documents a nationwide failure to responsibly manage underground waters, which are being depleted at an alarming rate. He cites "the tragedy of the commons," the unlimited use by citizens of a common area, leading to depletion. Among his recommendations is an immediate halt to unregulated groundwater pumping and changes in law and public policy to recognize groundwater as a valuable public resource.
2004, Island Press

Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit
Vandana Shiva

While drought and desertification are intensifying around the world, corporations are aggressively converting free-flowing water into bottled profits. Shiva, recipient of the 1993 Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award) outlines the emergence of corporate culture and the historical erosion of communal water rights. Using the international water trade and industrial activities such as damming, mining, and aquafarming as her lens, she exposes the destruction of the Earth and the disenfranchisement of the world's poor as they are stripped of rights to a precious common good.
2002 South End Press

When the Rivers Run Dry: Water--The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century
Fred Pearce

Science journalist Pearce sounds the alarm: a worldwide water shortage is the most fearful looming environmental crisis. The rivers of the world are running dry. As aquifers are tapped to extinction, rivers dammed to depletion, and wetlands converted to deserts, societies continue to employ the profligate water management techniques that created the current dire situation. When the Rivers Run Dry cogently describes the frightening ways in which this ecological emergency is affecting population centers, human health, food production, wildlife habitats, and species viability. Required reading.
2006, Beacon Press

The World's Water 2006-2007: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources
Peter Gleick, et.al.

The World's Water is the most comprehensive and up-to-date source of information and analysis on freshwater resources and the political, economic, scientific, and technological issues associated with them. It identifies and explains the most significant current trends worldwide. This volume includes overview chapters on water and terrorism; business risks of water; water and ecosystems; floods and droughts; desalination; and environmental justice and water. It contains an updated chronology of global conflicts associated with water. An indispensable reference.
2006 Beacon Press