Wade Davis River Notes : Drought & the Twilight of the American West - A

At a time when the Colorado River and all those who depend on it are in peril, this urgent book offers "both a love song and a paean of regret to Americas most spectacular river" (Denver Post) and "a plea to save [it] before its too late" (The Wall Street Journal).From bestselling author, longtime former National Geographic Explorer, and anthropologist Wade Davis comes the story of Americas Nile how it once flowed freely and how human intervention has left it near exhaustion, altering the water temperature, volume, local species, and shoreline of the river Theodore Roosevelt once urged us to "leave it as it is."Plugged by no fewer than twentyfive dams, the Colorado is the worlds most regulated river drainage, providing most of the water supply of Las Vegas, Tucson, and San Diego, and much of the power and water of Los Angeles and Phoenix, cities that are home to more than 25 million people. If it ceased flowing, the water held in its reservoirs might hold out for three to four years, but after that it would be necessary to abandon most of southern California and Arizona, and much of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. For the entire American Southwest, the Colorado is indeed the river of life, which makes it all the more tragic and ironic that by the time it approaches its final destination, it has been reduced to a shadow upon the sand, its delta dry and deserted, its flow a toxic trickle seeping into the sea. Yet despite more than a century of human interference,... | Wade Davis River Notes : Drought & the Twilight of the American West - A