Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S. [Hardcover]

Cynthia Barnett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 3, 2007

“Never before has the case been more compellingly made that America’s dependence on a free and abundant water supply has become an illusion. Cynthia Barnett does it by telling us the stories of the amazing personalities behind our water wars, the stunning contradictions that allow the wettest state to have the most watered lawns, and the thorough research that makes her conclusions inescapable. Barnett has established herself as one of Florida’s best journalists and Mirage is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of the state.”

—Mary Ellen Klas, Capital Bureau Chief, Miami Herald

 

“Mirage is the finest general study to date of the freshwater-supply crisis in Florida. Well-meaning villains abound in Cynthia Barnett’s story, but so too do heroes, such as Arthur R. Marshall Jr., Nathaniel Reed, and Marjorie Harris Carr. The author’s research is as thorough as her prose is graceful. Drinking water is the new oil. Get used to it.”

—Michael Gannon, Distinguished Professor of history, University of Florida, and author of Florida: A Short History

 

“With lively prose and a journalist’s eye for a good story, Cynthia Barnett offers a sobering account of water scarcity problems facing Florida—one of our wettest states—and the rest of the East Coast. Drawing on lessons learned from the American West, Mirage uses the lens of cultural attitudes about water use and misuse to plead for reform. Sure to engage and fascinate as it informs.”

—Robert Glennon, Morris K. Udall Professor of Law and Public Policy, University of Arizona, and author of Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America’s Fresh Waters

 

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.

 

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In recent decades, severe droughts in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states, along with shrinking aquifers, dried-up lakes and sluggish rivers in the Southeast have induced bitter East Coast fights over what was once an exclusively Western concern: water scarcity. What happened? Barnett, the long-time environmental reporter for Florida Trend magazine, answers that question in a rigorous look at the relentless pressure of development and burgeoning human populations on natural water supplies, particularly in the wetlands of Florida. Chapter by chapter, Barnett documents the enlarging sinkholes, loss of ancient lakes, pollution of water tables and river systems, aquifer mining and negligent politics that have led to Florida's perpetual water crisis-including a disastrous shift in weather patterns. Considering such crises elsewhere in the U.S., Barnett finds that successful allocation agreements are rare, lessons learned are quickly forgotten and an ever-growing population spells more trouble to come. Though it may lack popular appeal, this comprehensive and well-referenced volume does feature appearances from well-known figures like Walt Disney, Jeb Bush and Hurricane Katrina, and should become vital reading for citizens and policymakers as global concerns over water scarcity grow.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press/Regional (April 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0472115634
• ISBN-13: 978-0472115631
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,001,835 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Cynthia Barnett is a long-time journalist who has reported on freshwater issues from the Suwannee River to Singapore. She is author of the new book Blue Revolution: Unmaking America's water crisis, which calls for a water ethic for America.

The Boston Globe describes Ms. Barnett's author persona as "part journalist, part mom, part historian, and part optimist." The Los Angeles Times writes that she "takes us back to the origins of our water in much the same way, with much the same vividness and compassion as Michael Pollan led us from our kitchens to potato fields and feed lots of modern agribusiness."

Ms. Barnett's previous book, Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S., won the gold medal for best nonfiction in the Florida Book Awards and was named by The St. Petersburg Times as one of the top 10 books that every Floridian should read. Mirage was also a "One Region/One Book" read in thirty Florida counties.

Ms. Barnett has worked for newspapers and magazines for 25 years. Her numerous journalism awards include a national Sigma Delta Chi prize for investigative magazine reporting and eight Green Eyeshades, which recognize outstanding journalism in 11 southeastern states.

She earned her bachelor's in journalism and master's in environmental history, both from the University of Florida, and was the recipient of a Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan, where she spent a year studying freshwater supply.

Ms. Barnett lives in Gainesville, Florida, with her husband and two water-loving grade-schoolers. For more information, please visit the author's website at www.cynthiabarnett.net.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book on the vanishing water trick, April 25, 2007

By 

Prof Pigeon "profpigeon" (Wight) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S. (Hardcover)

Barnett, an experienced journalist, currently writing for a Florida business magazine, has put together a compelling tale of the drying out of the Eastern seaboard of the United States. Her main emphasis is Florida, once so wet that it couldn't be walked through, now - because of staggering population growth and mismanaged development - plagued by repeated droughts. Before I read this book I had no idea there was a story to be told about water supply in the East - and I certainly wouldn't have guessed that I would have found that story to be so engrossing. But Barnett has a journalist's eye for the telling detail, combined with a sharp appreciation of the science, and a great feel for the overall picture. This is a great book, and it will open many people's eyes to the need to be smarter with what she wisely calls, "Our greatest natural resource."

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mirage: Groundbreaking study of U.S. water issues, July 4, 2007

By 

Scemel "Scemel1" (Dayton, Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S. (Hardcover)

Perhaps you're like me. You live in a water rich region of the U.S., on top of one of the nation's most productive aquifers and a stone's throw from the Great Lakes -- one of the world's great reservoirs of fresh water.

Water scarcity is not your problem, right? Let all those fools moving to Florida, Texas, California and Nevada worry whether FEMA will have to roll into towns during the next drought and pass out bottled water. You can still turn on your grass sprinkler and catch fish in the local pond without worry.

If that's where you are when it comes to water, Cynthia Barnett has news for you -- someday Las Vegas and Miami will be coming for your water, too. And they'll set their sights on draining your fish pond dry.

If you're already in Florida and can't understand why water bills are going up in a subdivision surrounded by water-soaked scenery, Barnett has some tough love for you, too.

Reading Mirage will open your eyes. Barnett's writing is so (pardon the pun) fluid that even the most unsophisticated novice will come away with the ability to confidently explain why bottled "spring" water may actually be less safe to drink than what comes out of your kitchen tap.

The book is a must read for Floridians. It uses the state -- an extreme example of water policy gone bad -- to instruct readers in the basics tenents of environmental protection and why it matters to everyone. Why should Floridians care if Atlanta suburbanites water their lawns? Because in a drought the rivers that begin in Georgia won't have enough water to feed Florida's bays down stream. And without the perfect freshwater/saltwater balance at the outlet to the Gulf of Mexico, valuable shellfish are completely wiped out. Suddenly there's an economic problem, too.

The most important lesson of Mirage is that water scarcity is a national problem. Consider the water wealthy Great Lakes. Even residents of the upper Midwest can't relax. Barnett shows how southern lawmakers, becoming more powerful by the day thanks to population shifts and redistricting, have been plotting to pipe, truck and barge Lakes region freshwater south. Others have already tried to export it beyond the U.S. You'd think the Lakes have plenty of water to share, but as Florida has proven, even the most water-rich region can see its eco-system wrecked once the water starts getting pumped out.

The most instructive chapter in the book is called "Priceless." Barnett demonstrates that perhaps the best strategy to protect water is to price it right, to make it really worth something to us. But Americans so far refuse to accept the notion of drinking water for anything but a dirt cheap price. Consider the story of Tuscon, Ariz. After a drought, the city council tried to add the cost of finding future water reserves into consumers' bills. Within a year every council member was voted out of office.

But as Barnett shows, Americans can't pretend forever that water is a right and should be nearly free. We have to be taught to conserve. We're doing better in some ways. But Mirage proves we still have a lot of work to do.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Fallacy of Taking Fresh Water for Granted, April 30, 2007

By 

Mihran J. Ohanian "Jack" (Keystone Heights, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S. (Hardcover)

This an excellent expose of the fresh water availability crisis faced by Florida as its population growth continues unabated. Also, it addresses very well the overall water supply problems of the Eastern United States while focusing on Florida as the prime example of poor planning. Based on her extensive experience as an award winning investigative journalist Cynthia Barnett has written about a critical national problem which she has extensively researched and documented. The hard facts are interspersed with interesting vignettes about several important Florida personalities who had major impacts, for better or worse, on all facets of the State's natural environment. This is a highly readable and very informative book. It is a must read book for anyone who wants to truly understand the fresh water crisis we face in America and the unfortunate legacy we would leave to future generations without proactive solutions.