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Author : David Stiller
Release : 2021-06-15
Genre :
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 801/5 ( reviews)
Book Synopsis Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West by : David Stiller
Download or read book Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West written by David Stiller. This book was released on 2021-06-15. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Author : David Stiller
Release : 2021-06-15
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 816/5 ( reviews)
Book Synopsis Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West by : David Stiller
Download or read book Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West written by David Stiller. This book was released on 2021-06-15. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Water has always been one of the American West’s most precious and limited resources. The earliest inhabitants—Native Americans and later Hispanics—learned to share the region’s scant rainfall and snowmelt. When Euro-Americans arrived in the middle of the nineteenth century, they brought with them not only an interest in large-scale commercial agriculture but also new practices and laws about access to, and control of, the water essential for their survival and success. This included the concept of private rights to water, a critical resource that had previously been regarded as a communal asset. David Stiller’s thoughtful study focuses on the history of agricultural water use of the Rio Grande in Colorado’s San Luis Valley. After surveying the practices of early farmers in the region, he focuses on the impacts of Euro-American settlement and the ways these new agrarians endeavored to control the river. Using the Rio Grande as a case study, Stiller offers an informed and accessible history of the development of practices and technologies to store, distribute, and exploit water in Colorado and other western states, as well as an account of the creation of water rights and laws that govern this essential commodity throughout the West to this day. Stiller’s work ranges from meticulously monitored fields of irrigated alfalfa and potatoes to the local and state water agencies and halls of Congress. He also includes perceptive comments on the future of western water as these arid states become increasingly urbanized during a period of worsening drought and climate change. An excellent read for anyone curious about important issues in the West, Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West offers a succinct summary and analysis of Colorado’s use of water by agricultural interests, in addition to a valuable discussion of the past, present, and future of struggles over this necessary and endangered resource.
Author : Donald Worster
Release : 1992
Genre : Business & Economics
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 060/5 ( reviews)
Book Synopsis Rivers of Empire by : Donald Worster
Download or read book Rivers of Empire written by Donald Worster. This book was released on 1992. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American West, blessed with an abundance of earth and sky but cursed with a scarcity of life's most fundamental need, has long dreamed of harnessing all its rivers to produce unlimited wealth and power. In Rivers of Empire, award-winning historian Donald Worster tells the story of this dream and its outcome. He shows how, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Mormons were the first attempting to make that dream a reality, damming and diverting rivers to irrigate their land. He follows this intriguing history through the 1930s, when the federal government built hundreds of dams on every major western river, thereby laying the foundation for the cities and farms, money and power of today's West. Yet while these cities have become paradigms of modern American urban centers, and the farms successful high-tech enterprises, Worster reminds us that the costs have been extremely high. 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.
Author : Kenneth D. Frederick
Release : 2016-03-17
Genre : Nature
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 302/5 ( reviews)
Book Synopsis Water for Western Agriculture by : Kenneth D. Frederick
Download or read book Water for Western Agriculture written by Kenneth D. Frederick. This book was released on 2016-03-17. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title, originally published in 1982, examines the importance of western irrigation to U.S. agriculture and the impacts of the changing water supply situation on the development of western irrigation. Past trends, water supply conditions, water institutions, economic forces, technological alternatives, and environmental factors are examined for their impacts on the course of western irrigation. Water for Western Agriculture will be of particular interest for students studying environmental issues.
Author : Lawrence J. MacDonnell
Release : 1999
Genre : Business & Economics
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : /5 ( reviews)
Book Synopsis From Reclamation to Sustainability by : Lawrence J. MacDonnell
Download or read book From Reclamation to Sustainability written by Lawrence J. MacDonnell. This book was released on 1999. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Reclamation to Sustainability tells the story of four places in the West -- the Arkansas Valley and the Grand Valley of Colorado, the Truckee-Carson basins of California and Nevada, and the Yakima Basin in Washington -- where development and use of water, primarily for irrigated agriculture, have been central to economic and social development. In these places (and many others), the reclamation vision that helped settle the West now competes with a vision of a sustainable West. All four regions tell of the essential role water has played in western agriculture and the importance of this agriculture for settlement of much of the West. They also exemplify the many difficulties of turning prairie and desert into productive croplands, and MacDonnell describes the sometimes extraordinary human commitment and effort that made this possible. Now, however, western water resources have been developed beyond their sustainable capacity in an attempt to irrigate as much land as possible, and MacDonnell illustrates the consequences of this overdevelopment, including declining rural communities, dewatered streams incapable of supporting native species, and degraded water quality. He also provides examples of efforts to repair some of the damages and of the challenges involved in such restoration. MacDonnell argues that sustainable use of the West's water resources depends on reducing the gap between diverted water and used water, restoring the functional ecological integrity of water sources, allowing uses of developed water to change, and effective collaborative public/ private processes that help reconcile competing interests in water. He concludes that the manner in which the West movestoward sustainable use of its limited water resources -- particularly as it affects irrigated agriculture -- matters at least as much as achieving sustainable use. It matters because the choices we make will have important consequences for the future West.
