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Drowning the Dream California's Water Choices at the Millennium
(Click to Enlarge)
David Carle
ISBN: 0-275-96719-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-96719-2
256 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 2/28/2000
List Price: $91.95 (UK Sterling Price: £63.95)
Availability: Print on demand
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Description: Imported water has transformed the Golden State's environment and quality of life. In the last one hundred years, land ownership patterns and real estate boosterism have dramatically altered both urban and rural communities across the entire state. The key has been water from the Eastern Sierra, the Colorado River and, finally, Northern California rivers. Whoever brings the water, brings the people wrote engineer William Mulholland, whose leadership began the process of water irrigating unlimited growth. Using first-person voices of Californians to reveal the resulting changes, Carle concludes that the new millennium may be the time to stop drowning the California dream.

With extensive use of oral histories, contemporary newspaper articles, and autobiographies, Carle provides a rich exploration of the historic change in California, showing that imported water has shaped the pattern of population growth in the state. Water choices remain the primary tool, he claims, for shaping California's future. The state's damaged environment and reduced quality of life can be corrected if Californians will step out of their historic pattern and embrace limited water supplies as a fact of life in this naturally dry region.
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction: Changes and Choices
    Frontierland to Fantasyland
    In Grizzly Days
    Save the Cows... Horses Off the Cliffs
    Gold Fever: Sick Forefathers
    Statehood, State Hoods and State Laws
    R&R Railroads and Real Estate, Citrus and Sunshine
    Water Choices (1)--Eastern Sierra Water
    Melodrama on the Right Side of California
    Life in the Big City--How Did They Get Away With It?
    Did They See Where They Were Going?
    What If the Los Angeles Aqueduct Had Never Been Built?
    Water Choices (2)--Colorado River Water
    "And Lest Our City Shrivel and Die..."
    Boom! Postwar, Postaqueduct Arrivals
    People Fumes: Just Don't Inhale
    Water Choices (3)--Northern California Water
    The Northern End of the Pipe
    Too Much Is Not Enough
    Sprawling Gridlock
    Tomorrowland
    Today's Choice (1): Who Needs Farms?
    Today's Choice (2): The Environment--Has Mono Lake Really Been Saved?
    Visualizing Tomorrow--Just Say No to Water?
    References
    Index
About the Author: DAVID CARLE teaches biology at Cerro Coso Community College, Eastern Sierra College Center. He has worked as a state park ranger at Hearst Castle, in the gold country of the Sierra foothills, and was unit ranger in charge of the State Indian Museum in Sacramento. Since 1982, at the Mono Lake Tufa State Reserve, he has shared the unit ranger position with his wife, participating in the long effort to protect that Eastern Sierra inland sea from the effects of stream diversions to Los Angeles.
LCC Class: 333
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