Customer Reviews

The Trout Pool Paradox: The American Lives of Three Rivers

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Despite the title (trout pools are sections of brooks where cool water collects
and serve as feeding grounds for trout), author George Black has said "this
really isn't intended to be a fishing book..."

The three Connecticut rivers he looks at--the Naugatuck, the Shepaug, and
the Housatonic--have experienced entirely different fates, despite their
proximity and generally similar environments. The Naugatuck became an
industrialized river, a convenient waste stream for Waterbury's brass factories
and other industrial plants along its length. The Shepaug, tapped to feed the
city of Waterbury's lust for water, became a flow-impaired shadow of its
former self, except for a few months in the spring. The Housatonic, despite
damming for hydroelectric purposes, was able to remain a prime trout-fishing
and recreational river (despite being polluted with PCBs).

Providing a meandering tracing of the history of these rivers, Black deals with
deeper concepts, such as the difference between restoring and preserving a
natural environment, man's attempts to create areas that match our vision of
'nature' (by stocking rivers with non-native trout species, for example), and our
very understanding of nature. We tend to stand back and picture nature as something
that is obvious and given and apart from us, and yet man must live by exploiting
and sometimes altering natural resources, and the pristine natural environments
we imagine are archaic and probably unattainable.

Interestingly enough, just in the spring of 2005 (after publication of this book), a
court settlement was reached which will largely restore the flow of the Shepaug.
Black discusses this lawsuit and foresaw the parties reaching a settlement of
the matter rather than continuing litigation.

First let's get one thing straight- Black is a superb writer who understants his subject. He has served as a writer and an editor for several environmental publications. In Trout Pool Paradox He follows the histories of three very similar Conncticut rivers each with different history and a different fate; one seriously degraded, one modified beyond recognition,and another(still a trout stream) but heavily effected by human activities. He digs into the social, political and historical forces that made them different. As a previous reviewer said, he wants to give his readers a perspective on how we relate to our natural environment. Black higlights some of the conflicts and contrdictions that arrise when we try to restore someting that has been lost forever. He wants the reader to realize a key paradox of environmentalism--that as much as we may want to live in a natural environment, our very living there changes it.

Black does a marvelous job of describing both the historical and contemporary figures who have affected the rivers. Everyone, he finds, has a different take on the current conditions of the three streams and have different but reasonable views about what needs to be done. They all have different solutions to the Trout Pool Paradox.

The book is fascinating, beautifully written, and thought provoking. A must read for anyone who loves free flowing rivers

-Doug