Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Book Reviews

2016; Wiley; Volume: 52; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/1752-1688.12385

1752-1688

Richard H. McCuen,

Environmental and Cultural Studies in Latin America and Beyond

Mono Lake: From Dead Sea to Environmental Treasure, A. Hoffman. Univ. of New Mexico Press, Univ. of New Mexico, MSC05 3185, Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001. 2014. 168 pages. $35. ISBN 978-0-8263-5444-0. Tucked behind the California's Sierra Nevada at the edge of the Great Basin, sheltered from Pacific moisture, and fed by streams falling from the tallest mountains in the continental United States, just over Tioga Pass from Yosemite and 350 miles north of Los Angeles, lies a most unusual lake, Mono Lake. It sits in the back room of California, perhaps more closely resembling the desert biomes of Nevada, but tied inextricably to the fortunes of the great Southland. Tectonics and volcanism formed the Lake, which having no outlet has developed a most remarkable saline ecosystem. Home to alkali flies, brine shrimp, and millions of migratory birds, Mono Lake has long had an uneasy relationship with people. I first made my acquaintance with Mono Lake as a college student at UC Davis in the early 1980s. Wandering through the Whole Earth Festival, I found a booth displaying pictures of a beautiful circular lake filled with waterfowl and odd mineral formations. “Help us save Mono Lake!” said the young activist behind the table. That's where I learned about the Mono Lake Committee and their struggle with the City of Los Angeles. The City's diversions of water to serve their customers were disrupting the water balance of the Lake, which was rapidly disappearing. Dropping water levels were allowing predators to raid the bird colonies, while rising salinity was threatening the viability of the Lake's unique ecosystem. I bought an attractive T-shirt, which I have long outgrown. But I've continued to follow the Mono Lake story. From a water management perspective, a seminal legal event was the 1983 California State Supreme Court case that based protection of the Lake on the State Constitution's Public Trust doctrine. Many legal actions followed, until in 1994 the State Water Resources Control Board required reduced diversions from the streams feeding the Lake. Work has continued on restoration, and water levels are beginning to recover. The University of New Mexico Press has published a book that tells the story of the relationship of people to Mono Lake. Author Abraham Hoffman is a Professor of History at Los Angeles Valley College, but clearly a piece of his heart is in the Mono-Inyo region. He has interviewed local residents and poured through newspaper stories, magazine articles, journal articles, science and history books, and a variety of other sources to reveal a tiny part of the world filled with everyday lives in a unique setting. Hoffman, in his Introduction, describes his book as “a tracing of the human perception of the lake and the values people have defined for it in the past century.” The book begins with Mono Paiute life on the lake, noting in particular their unique culture of harvesting fly pupae. However, his book disappoints in telling the Native American story, spending only a paragraph at the beginning, and otherwise mostly mentioning them when they interact with the white settlers. Otherwise, Hoffman tells little about the culture of the Kutzadika'a people from their own perspective. At the end of the book, Hoffman summarizes the research done by Stanford University students in the 1970s, the rise of the Mono Lake Committee, and ends when the environmental tide has clearly turned. The heart of the book is between these events, as Euro-American pioneers settled the region around the Lake and exploited its resources. A key point Hoffman makes is the environmental perception of the Lake only arose in recent years — the Lake has never been “untouched” and has a long history of human use and abuse. The scientist and engineer part of me found the book a little frustrating. The book says little about the geochemistry of the Lake or the ecology of the Lake's web of life. My frustration extended toward geography as well, since the book discussed many places in the region but only provided a rudimentary map. For this information, you will have to do your homework elsewhere. But as a person who enjoys history, this book provided a fascinating glimpse into the human presence around and on the Lake, and how people's view of the Lake has shifted with the times and uses of the Lake. This exploration of perception begins with Mark Twain, who visited Mono Lake in the 1860s. Twain applied his caustic wit to the Lake and launched a long era of considering the Lake to be a “Dead Sea.” However, over time a more romantic view of the Lake grew, inspiring poetry and attempts to build a tourist industry. With the rise of the Save Mono Lake movement, it seems the latter view has prevailed. Mono Lake went through many phases of attempts at exploitation. First came the miners, who found profitable mineral seams in the mountains surrounding the Lake. Then, oil exploration arrived but proved to be more useful for speculation than production. In the 1930s, the Lake enjoyed a “golden age” of “Mark Twain Days” celebrations highlighted by widely attended speedboat races. The 1940s brought both World War II and the City of Los Angeles developing the streams feeding Mono Lake. For years afterwards, the City and local boosters teamed up to promote fishing, hunting, and other recreation in the mountains above the Lake, including the reservoirs built for the city water supply and offered as fishing meccas. However, other than a couple local inns that served traffic to and from Yosemite and visitors with an eclectic taste for Mono Lake, development at the Lake's edge never really materialized, despite some attempts at developing health resorts, boat tours, water skiing, and a marina. One theme of the book is the relationship of Mono Lake to Los Angeles. As the highway system improved, visitors arrived, some to enjoy the lake, but most to hunt, fish, and explore the adjacent mountains. At the same time, Los Angeles took away the water from the Lake's tributaries. Hoffman tells stories of the tension this created, which never escalated into anything like the confrontations of the nearby Owens Valley. At the same time, Los Angeles made some local friends by helping to promote local tourism. It is a tale of a love-hate relationship between a megalopolis and an isolated rural region. Hoffman carries another interesting theme through the book: the uneasy relationship of people to the Lake itself. The water would burn your eyes and leave your skin salty and itchy. Sudden storms stranded people on the islands, wrecked boats, and drowned boaters. Meanwhile people harvested the eggs from the bird colonies and sold Lake Salts as a health cure. As miners and anglers came and went, a solid group of locals found a way to make the Mono Lake area their home. Hoffman's stories of the people who settled the area and earned their livelihoods charms you with their sense of both hometown ordinariness and the quirkiness of people who live in and love their isolated and harsh environment. He provides a classic small-town history, much like those you might read about the small communities in your home state. But the book also fascinates because of its unique locale. Although clearly not a stand-alone book, Hoffman fills a little-explored gap. You could include this in your collection about Mono Lake or in your Western history collection. The book is attractively printed, easy to read, and filled with fascinating vignettes of everything from small town escapes to visiting movie actors. Hoffman has given us a small but useful supplement to our own relationship to Mono Lake. Paul J. Pickett Washington Dept. of Ecology Olympia, Washington 98504-7710 Deadbeat Dams: Why We Should Abolish the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and Tear Down Glen Canyon Dam, D.P. Beard. Johnson Books, 3005 Center Green Dr., Ste. 225, Boulder, CO 80301. 2015. 143 pages. ISBN 978-1-555-664-602. In Deadbeat Dams, Daniel P. Beard, former Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation (1993-1995), describes an agenda for reforming water storage, irrigation delivery, and infrastructure management in the United States (U.S.), particularly within the arid regions of the American West. Beard articulates 10 distinct points for reform that, in general, center on the need for heightened fiscal oversight and a more robust integration of scientific and economic analysis when evaluating federal water projects. Beard compliments revealing data on federal spending with anecdotes from his career in federal service to cast serious doubts on the relevance and prudence of many federal water projects, both those proposed and in existence. Very much in line with the narrative initiated in a 1993 book titled Cadillac Desert, Beard builds his agenda by describing the stronghold that the “water nobility” and their politically powerful allies in Washington, D.C., have over western water. He describes the “water nobility” as a group of wealthy water recipients (irrigators, municipalities, industry, and other landowners) who have succeeded in establishing federally subsidized water delivery as an entitlement, and have subsequently wielded this right to shape the development and allocation of western water for more than a century. To emphasize this largess, Beard calls the reader's attention to the almost unfathomable amount of federal subsidies that accompany delivery of water from federal irrigation projects such as that of the Westlands Water District in California's Central Valley. He also attempts to debunk a series of myths — purportedly perpetuated by the water nobility to keep the water and dollars flowing — including the powerful myth that water to agriculture must be subsidized to meet our nation's needs. Along with severing ties with the water nobility and ceasing subsidies for water delivery, Beard suggests that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) should be abolished. Although this suggestion may be politically unpalatable, Beard builds a convincing case by highlighting examples of extreme incompetence and largess by the Bureau. The poster child for his argument is a USBR-funded bowling alley built in the 1990s in Duchesne, Utah, as a recreational outlet for workers on the Central Utah Project at the behest of the community and Utah politicians. Beard's agenda also includes a call for the removal of environmentally destructive (and economically useless) dams — specifically Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona. At a massive 583 feet, Glen Canyon Dam has been shrouded in controversy since it was proposed, first for the inundation of Glen Canyon (said to rival the Grand Canyon in esthetic quality), and later for its failure to fully contain the floodwaters of the Colorado River. Beard suggests the removal of Glen Canyon Dam to support the need for renegotiating environmental, economic, and social values of our established (and aging) water infrastructure in the arid West. In addition, his agenda includes proposals that any new funding for water projects should be determined by an independent commission and not left to the pork-barrel politics of Congress. There needs to be a more robust integration of scientifically derived information in water resource management decision making, water infrastructure planning must include explicit recognition of the impacts of climate change on water supplies, and more attention must be paid to conservation of current water supplies. The book is short (140 pages of text) and provocative, a strategy I think Beard rightly points out is needed in the conversation over water management in the West. However, the book suffers from an unbalanced treatment one might expect in a policy reform agenda. A significant lack of attention is paid to the public benefits of many federally funded water projects, including the recent trend of using public funding to remove environmentally destructive water projects that are no longer relevant or of little economic value to tax payers. In addition, except for a few brief sentences, the impacts of the watershed movement of the 1990s that brought about some changes in the management of water resource projects (including water delivery projects) to include local and regional values, both ecological and social, are not mentioned. Instead of forwarding his agenda in a way that aligns with these diffuse, mostly local examples of positive momentum toward U.S. water management reform, Beard continues to grind his ax against the federal bureaucracy. He is concerned federal agencies will not be able to develop innovative solutions to our pressing water problems, and there is little hope they will ever be interested in promoting water conservation and efficiency improvement. For Beard, the past is an indication of the future of federal water management, and I think that narrative runs counter to much of the current research on water resource governance and management that suggests emerging opportunities for comanagement of water resources. He is correct; however, the political will to change the way in which federal water is subsidized and allocated does not currently exist in a salient form. That alone is likely the biggest hurdle to achieving his own reform agenda. The recognition that politics, not science, still controls water in the U.S. West may be the most important message this book has to offer readers — especially for students. The major shortcoming of the book is the lack of citations and/or references of any kind. I would like to recommend this book to students in my “Water Policy in the American West” class as a provocative supplement to peer-reviewed and law review articles, but the lack of references to support the project statistics and economic data Beard employs to advance his arguments is antithetical to the type of writing and research I expect from my policy students. I respect Beard's career in public service and his intimate knowledge of U.S. water infrastructure, but at times, it is hard to decipher where facts end and anecdotes begin. On the other hand, at only around US$17, this book is an entertaining, approachable, and short read for anyone interested in western water, and as many popular media reviews have already pointed out, the book can be considered a contemporary supplement to Reisner's treatise on the history of water development in the American West. While I would not recommend this book alone to readers without a substantial background in western water politics, it may be useful for classroom and collegial discussions already focused on these issues. Brian C. Chaffin College of Forestry, University of Montana Missoula, Montana 59812 Plastic Water: The Social and Material Life of Bottled Water, G. Hawkins, E. Potter, and K. Race. The MIT Press, One Rogers St., Cambridge, MA 02142. 2015. 260 pages. $25. ISBN 978-0-262-029-414. Plastic Water examines the processes taken by branded water to insinuate itself into our daily lives. It goes beyond the usual political and environmental critiques of bottled water to investigate its multiplicity, examining a bottle of water's simultaneous existence as a product, personal health resource, object of boycotts, and part of accumulating waste matter. Throughout, the book focuses on the ontological dimensions of drinking bottled water — the ways in which this habit enacts new relations and meanings that may interfere with other drinking water practices. Transient Landscapes: Insights on a Changing Planet, E. Wohl. Univ. of Colorado Press, 5589 Arapahoe Ave., Ste. 2066, Boulder, CO 80303. 2015. 236 pages. ISBN 978-1-607-323-686. Landscapes — the unique combination of landforms, plants, animals, and weather that compose any natural place — are inherently transient. Each essay in this book introduces this idea of a constantly metamorphosing global landscape, revealing how to see the ubiquity of landscape transience, both of which results through Earth's natural environmental and climatological processes and that which comes from human intervention. The essays are grouped by type of environmental change: long-term, large-scale transformation driven by geological forces such as tectonic uplift and volcanism; natural variability at shorter time scales, such as seasonal flooding; and modifications resulting from human activities. Each essay is set in a unique location and is largely drawn from Wohl's experiences. Determining the Economic Value of Water: Concepts and Methods ( Second Edition), R.A. Young and J.B. Loomis. RFF Press, Routledge, 711 Third Ave., New York, NY 10017. 2014. 337 pages. ISBN 978-0-415-838-504. This volume provides a comprehensive exposition of the application of economic valuation methods to proposed water resources investments and policies. It provides a conceptual framework for evaluation of both commodity and public good uses of water, addressing nonmarket valuation techniques appropriate to measuring public benefits — including nonpoint source water quality improvement and recreation. The book describes the various measurement methods and illustrates how they are applied. The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity, and the Urban Imagination, M. Gandy. http://mitpress.mit.edu. 2014. 351 pages. $30. ISBN 978-0-262-028-257. Water lies at the intersection of landscape and infrastructure, crossing between the visible and invisible domains of urban space. In this book, the author considers the cultural and material significance of water through the experiences of six cities: Paris, Berlin, Lagos, Mumbai, Los Angeles, and London. The evolution of relationships among modernity, nature, and the urban imagination is traced using different vantage points and through different periods. The Science of Water: Concepts and Applications ( Second Edition), F.R. Spellman. CRC Press, 6000 Broken Sound Pkwy. NW, Ste. 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742. 2015. 528 pages. ISBN 978-1-482-242-935. This book contains a wealth of scientific information. The text addresses water contamination as a growing problem, including the cause of the contaminants and their impact on surface water and groundwater sources. It highlights three distinct sources of freshwater: surface water, groundwater, and groundwater under the direct influence of surface water. It discusses the conditions that constitute GUDISW and the surface water treatment rule. It also explores sustainability and the effect of human use, misuse, and reuse of freshwater and wastewater on the overall water supply.