Some miles south of the Mexican city of Los Algodones, near the Baja Peninsula, the Colorado River ends. It used to flow to the sea, emptying into the Gulf of California. As recently as midcentury, its delta was a wetland ecosystem, with lagoons, fish, and jaguars. Now the drainage basin is an arid wasteland. Motorists have to pay a toll to drive over a bridge that crosses only sand. In 2014, an agreement between the United States and Mexico authorized a one-time release of river water through an upstream dam over an eight-week period. Children came to marvel at a river they didn't even know was there. Where the Water Goes, longtime New Yorker contributor David Owen explores one of the most complex water systems in the world. Although visually stunning, the Colorado River is not a storied transportation waterway like the Mississippi or a cradle of civilization like the Nile. It is only 1,400 miles long and not very wide in places. Yet what it lacks in size it makes up for in footprint. The Colorado runs dry because it provides water to tens of millions of people. In addition to residents of northern Mexico and southern California (including Los Angeles), the river and its tributaries supply water to Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. Where the Water Goes exposes and revels in the complexities of water policy. The Bellagio's famous fountain in Las Vegas, for instance, might seem like a wanton waste of a precious resource in the middle of a desert. Yet it is a drop in the bucket. The fountain uses a miniscule 64 acre-feet of water — and its source is not the Colorado but a combination of groundwater and storm runoff. Moreover, Las Vegas and Nevada more broadly have some of the most effective water conservation policies in the Southwest. Las Vegas has reduced its annual consumption by over 15 billion gallons since 2007. If southern California were so efficient, the river would produce a surplus rather than a deficit.Where the Water Goes suffers its only real shortcoming. The book is a delightful read, digressive and omnivorous in its concern with natural history, travel, public policy, and geography. But Owen does not pretend to have answers. While identifying difficult trade-offs in water management, he does not make any choices. The closest to an effective water policy the Colorado has seen in recent years was a sharing arrangement known as Minute 319 between the United States and Mexico after the Baja earthquake of 2010. It was a momentary reprieve from the tragedy of the commons that the Colorado River exemplifies. But rights sharing won't halt population growth or climate change. Get it while you can. One day it will be gone.Michael O'Donnell is a lawyer who lives in Evanston, Illinois. His reviews and essays appear in The Nation, the Washington Monthly, and the Christian Science Monitor, among other publications.
Reviewer: Michael O'Donnell
The Barnes & Noble Review
…a brisk and informative travelogue that wends from headwaters in the state of Colorado to where the water trickles to a halt in a riverbed cracked by the heat of the desert sun in Mexico…Owen has the keen observation of a birder combined with the breezy writing to draw you in with unusual insights…Where the Water Goes raises more questions than it answers, but if wondering where the water comes from prompts readers to plumb this voluminous literature around the Colorado River more deeply, then Owen's book will have done important work.
The New York Times Book Review - David Biello
02/27/2017
Owen has the keen observation of a birder combined with the breezy writing to draw you in with unusual insights. . . . As Owen shows, the Colorado River is a great, sad, terrifying, possibly hopeful example of the pervasive, permanent mark people are making on the planet.” —The New York Times Book Review Wall Street Journal Where the Water Goes doesn't pretend to solve the problems Owen acknowledges are overwhelming and, in some ways, impossible. It's a restless travelogue of long-term human impact on the natural world, and how politics and economics have as much to do with redirecting rivers as any canal. But with its historical eddies, policy asides, and trips to the Hoover Dam, at heart Where the Water Goes is about water as a function of time, and a reminder that we're running out of both.” —NPR .orgWhere the Water Goes makes an eloquent argument for addressing the impact of human inhabitants on the natural world.” —BBC.com Science Magazine Where the Water Goes is crucial to our future.” —Boulder Daily Camera Where the Water Goes: Life and Death Along the Colorado River … handles its sprawling subject with deftness and quirkiness… Owen delves into the history and politics of the much-dammed, over-allocated river, as well as the arcana of Western water law and the weirdness of RV culture, without losing sight of larger questions about the sustainability of America's efforts to make the desert bloom.” —Westword BookPeople’s Blog Wall Street Journal Publishers Weekly Library Journal Booklist Where the Water Goes is at once informative, entertaining, and unsparing—essential reading for anyone who cares about the American West.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction The Road to Little Dribbling and A Walk in the Woods Cadillac Desert .” —Ian Frazier, author of Great Plains, On the Rez, and Hogs Wild The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey
★ 02/15/2017
2017-01-31
