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Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S.
Regional
April 2007
On Sale: April 3, 2007
248 pages
ISBN: 0472115634
EAN: 9780472115631
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Part investigative journalism, part environmental history, Mirage reveals how the eastern half of the nationβhistorically so wet that early settlers predicted it would never even need irrigationβhas squandered so much of its abundant freshwater that it now faces shortages and conflicts once unique to the arid West. Floridaβs parched swamps and supersized residential developments set the stage in the first book to call attention to the steady disappearance of freshwater in the American East, from water-diversion threats in the Great Lakes to tapped-out freshwater aquifers along the Atlantic seaboard. Told through a colorful cast of characters including Walt Disney, Jeb Bush and Texas oilman Boone Pickens, Mirage ferries the reader through the key water-supply issues facing America and the globe: water wars, the politics of development, inequities in the price of water, the bottled-water industry, privatization, and new-water-supply schemes. From its calamitous opening scene of a sinkhole swallowing a house in Florida to its concluding meditation on the relationship between water and the American character, Mirage is a compelling and timely portrait of the use and abuse of freshwater in an era of rapidly vanishing natural resources.
 Media BuzzMorning Edition - June 15, 2007
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