Rivers in the Desert follows the remarkable career of William Mulholland, the visionary who engineered the rise of Los Angeles as the greatest American city west of the Mississippi. He sought to transform the sparse and barren desert into an inhabitable environment by designing the longest aqueduct in the Western Hemisphere, bringing water from the mountains to support a large city. This "fascinating history" chronicles Mulholland's dramatic ascension...

"Water. The single most necessary element to sustain life. Brockovich warns that America's water crisis isn't looming on the horizon--it's already here. Superman Isn't Coming makes clear that the most precious resource on planet Earth is alarmingly polluted by toxins, hazardous waste, lead, fracking chemicals, and more. In the 20 years since her eponymous film, Brockovich has kept up the fight for clean water one town at a time. She receives thousands...

"In the far north of the Scandinavian Union, now occupied by the power state of New Qian, seventeen-year-old Noria Kaitio studies to become a tea master like her father. It is a position that holds great responsibility and a dangerous secret. Tea masters alone know the location of hidden water sources, including the natural spring that once provided water for her whole village. When Noria's father dies, the secret of the spring reaches the new military...

"This book-the first ethnography of water conservation on the Great Plains-provides an account of High Plains aquifer decline through an exploration of the different ways in which heartland residents inhabit and understand the imminent depletion of groundwater. This literary ethnography offers a vividly sketched look into the lives and stories of this community, based on interviews with members of the community such as fellow farmers and state regulators,...

Learn rainwater harvesting techniques. In California and other regions affected by drought, agriculture is suffering from a lack of water and farms are being abandoned at an alarming rate. But some people have developed solutions to capture the rains that DO fall. In this state and in many other dry regions around the world, land restoration helps water penetrate healthy soils and in turn increase crop yields. Even in dry areas, water which typically...

From the publisher. When we turn on the tap or twist open a tall plastic bottle, we might not give a second thought to where our drinking water comes from. But how it gets from the ground to the glass is far more complex than we might think. With concerns over pollution and new technologies like fracking, is it safe to drink tap water? Should we feel guilty buying bottled water? Is the water we drink vulnerable to terrorist attacks? With springs running...

Follows the experiences of a young girl who dreams of bringing clean drinking water to her African village as she rises early every morning and makes long journeys to the well with a heavy pot that she carries on her head.

"A vivid, searching journey into California's complicated relationship to its water, from the Gold Rush to today -- an epic story of the struggle to overcome the constraints of nature Mark Arax is from a family of Central Valley farmers -- a journalist with deep ties to the land, who has watched as the battles over water have intensified even as the state lurches from drought to flood and back again. In The Dreamt Land he travels the state to explore...