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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
nation—historically so wet that early settlers predicted it
would never even need irrigation—has squandered so much of
its abundant freshwater that it now faces shortages and
conflicts once unique to the arid West. Florida’s 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.
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