Water in California is controlled, stored, delivered, and managed within a complex network of interlocking and cooperating districts and agencies. Unraveling and understanding this system is not easy. This book describes how the current system works (or doesn't work) and discusses the issues that face elected officials, water and resource managers, and the general public. Using the Los Angeles area as a microcosm of the state, environmental activist Dorothy Green gathers detailed information on its water systems and applies the lessons learned from this data statewide. A useful primer on watershed and water policy issues, this book provides reasoned, thoughtful, and insightful arguments about sustainability.
Dorothy Green is founding president of Heal the Bay and among the founders of the Los Angeles & San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council, of which she is also president emeritus. She has chaired the California Water Policy (POWER) conference for the past 17 years and has helped to found the only non-profit in the state, the California Water Impact Network (c-win.org), totally devoted to water supply issues.
"Dorothy Green has produced a tour de force with her wonderfully clear exposition of the evolution of water-management successes and failures in the greater Los Angeles area and much of the state."—Norris Hundley, author of The Great Thirst: Californians and Water—A History
"If you have questions about water management in California, this book holds the answers. Water delivery systems make life possible in California, from natural watersheds and rivers to man-made aqueducts, treatment plants and delivery pipes. Dorothy Green's Managing Water uses the Los Angeles area to tell a statewide story of water supply, drinking water quality and treatment, conservation, recycling, and future planning. How is water kept pure or, when polluted, made clean again? What contaminates lurk in groundwater basins? What agency delivers water to your home? And how are water policy decisions made that effect your future? This is a detailed summary of the complex world of California water management that provides common sense recommendations for the future."—David Carle, author of Introduction to Water in California
"For students of California water, Dorothy Green uses the complexity of water management in the Los Angeles area as the essential classroom. This is required reading and a necessary reference for all who participate in southern California's efforts to manage its most limited and threatened resource."—Jeffrey Mount, University of California, Davis, author of California Rivers and Streams
336 pp.6 x 9Illus: 45 line illustrations, 15 tables
9780520253278$34.95|£30.00Paper
Oct 2007