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Jacques Leslie

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Deep Water: The Epic Struggle over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment Paperback – November 14, 2006

by Jacques Leslie (Author)

2.3 11 ratings

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A Discover Magazine Top Science Book of the Year

A Northern California Book Award Finalist

There are more than 45,000 of them in the world. They have altered the speed of the planet's rotation, the tilt of its axis, and the shape of its gravitational field. They influence landscapes and societies. They are dams, and in Deep Water, Jacques Leslie offers an incisive, searching, and beautifully written account of the emerging crisis over dams and the world's water. Reporting in the tradition of John McPhee and Peter Matthiessen, Leslie examines the crisis through the lives of three people: Medha Patkar, the world's foremost anti-dam activist; Thayer Scudder, an American anthropologist; and Don Blackmore, an Australian water manager. In each of these engrossing portraits, Leslie shows how dams seduce national leaders with seeming bounties of water and power but end up producing blights on the citizenry and landscape. Deep Water is an eloquent and important book about the water crisis and a startling look at the fate of our planet.

Print length

368 pages
Language

English
Publication date

November 14, 2006
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.81 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

0312425562
ISBN-13

978-0312425562
See all details

Rashid Khalidi
2,176
Paperback
in Israel & Palestine History
$10.99
$9.71 shipping

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Fascinating . . . Jacques Leslie is a fine writer. . . . No other book presents this issue to a lay reader so thoroughly and so persuasively.” ―The Seattle Times

“Leslie delivers scene and mood with the economy and precision of a good novelist. His profiles are so well observed one forgets that the characters have not sprung from his own imagination.” ―Columbia Journalism Review

“Leslie's edgy, potent, and in-depth inquiry unveils the drastic, unintentional consequences of dams and exposes yet more evidence of the catastrophic results of allowing greed and politics to trump science and justice.” ―Booklist

“Leslie has written a volume that is heir, both in organization and in power, to Encounters with the Archdruid, John McPhee's classic profile of David Brower and his fight against dam-nation. . . . Superb.” ―Bill McKibben, OnEarth magazine

“If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water.” ―Ismail Serageldin, former Vice President of the World Bank

About the Author

Jacques Leslie's writing has won numerous awards, including the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for Deep Water and the Sigma Delta Chi Foreign Correspondence Award for his reporting during the Vietnam War. He is the author of The Mark: A War Correspondent's Memoir of Vietnam and Cambodia. He lives in Mill Valley, California.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador; First Edition (November 14, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0312425562
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0312425562
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.81 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,914,249 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #759 in Water Quality & Treatment
- #833 in Water Supply & Land Use (Books)
- #1,229 in Oil & Energy Industry (Books)

Customer Reviews:
2.3 11 ratings

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2.3 out of 5

11 global ratings

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Amazon Customer

Amazon is an expensive middle man.

Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2015

Verified Purchase

It came with a $1.00 clearance sticker from the book store down the road still attached. A bit insulting considering I paid about $15 for a $1 book.

Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2014

Verified Purchase

Good book but the author could have said the same thing in fewer pages

Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2017

Verified Purchase

This book doesn’t have a single citation. I get that it’s essentailly a narrative, but he has statistics in here that aren’t cited.

One person found this helpful

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Shelley Jamieson

Deep Waters

Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2009

Verified Purchase

I did not get the book that I thought that I was ordering. Will not be reading.

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William Maya

Fascinating and Disturbing

Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2010

Jacques Leslie writes detailed reports on the development of major dam systems in India, Southern Africa, and Australia. He examines all aspects of the politics involved in planning and financing these dams through the World Bank. He also describes on how these projects focus only on the main "benefits" of the dams such as irrigation or hydro power to the detriment of everything else including mass resettlement of local (poor) peoples that sound too similar to the constanting shifting of native peoples in the United States to make room for "civilization" and "development." In the process Leslie goes in to significant detail on the history, ecology, anthropology, and economics of these regions. This book should have received five stars, but for glaring omissions of the publisher. There is no index and no list of sources. Leslie is a journalist and this book reads like a series in a magazine. His content is wonderful and should not be missed. However, the editors should have included more detailed maps of the areas being discussed and diagrams or photographs of the dams would also have greatly added to the work (not even the cover photo has anything to do with the dams under discussion). In addition, Leslie had worked with photographers on some of these investigations and photographs of the dams and the areas in question would have been very helpful. Google Earth is a good backup to fill this void, but it seems like the publisher wanted to save money in publishing this book. As a result, Leslie's work is first rate, but the book as a whole has limited usefullness.

9 people found this helpful

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Richard Reese (author of Understanding Sustainability)

Dam Fever

Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2014

The completion of the Hoover Dam in 1935 was a head-snapping experience — something like the moon landing, or the atomic bomb — history-making techno-craziness. It was the greatest construction project in human history, and the world’s biggest power plant. It was a giant leap forward in humankind’s crusade to enslave and abuse Big Mama Nature, and leave behind enormous messes for the kids.

Legions of hustlers were thrilled to realize the fabulous new opportunities for becoming rich whilst not getting their hands dirty. From 1935 to 2000, about 45,000 large dams were constructed in 140 nations. In his book, Deep Water, Jacques Leslie takes readers to India, Africa, and Australia to explore the dark world of the dammed.

In India, we meet Ms. Medha Patkar, a charismatic full-throttle activist determined to stop the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada River. It would flood the homes of 200,000 to 300,000, many of whom were indigenous tribal people. Tribal folks were happy to live in the roadless forest, where the Hindus didn’t molest them. In the Hindu world, tribal people were assigned a status even lower than the untouchables. Tribes had zero political power.

The primary villain in this book was the World Bank, which poured billions of dollars into dam projects, to spur what is comically referred to as sustainable development. Devious bureaucrats in India were highly skilled at diverting a good portion of this flood of money into their own pockets. The politicians of India were so corrupt that they made American officials almost look virtuous. Social and environmental concerns went out the window.

In India alone, dams have displaced somewhere between 21 and 55 million people (40 to 80 million worldwide). In the relocation game, officials promised the sun and moon to the families to be displaced, like five acres (2 ha) of good land and a government job. What they actually ended up getting was screwed. Their fields were under water, and they were prohibited from fishing in the reservoir. Often the tribes scattered to the winds, and ended up in urban nightmares.

India’s population is projected to be larger than China’s by 2050. The privileged folks hunger to enjoy a planet-trashing consumer lifestyle, and have little concern for what happens to the politically invisible. The nation has already built 4,300 large dams, and has plans for 700 to 1,000 more. Dam building is easier and more profitable than population management.

The next section of the book takes us to Southern Africa, where we meet anthropologist Thayer Scudder, who spent decades as a consultant specializing in the resettlement of unlucky people who resided in future reservoirs. He was skilled at creating high quality resettlement plans, and disappointed to see them all mostly ignored. Once again, the natives were screwed, the officials pocketed a lot of money, and the ecosystem was damned.

Scudder had no doubt that dams were cool, in theory. In theory, it was not impossible to create water projects that were fair, equitable, beneficial, and environmentally sensitive. On the other hand, he believed that 70 percent of the world’s 45,000 large dams should have never been built. Decade after decade, he nurtured a fantasy that some day he would be involved in creating just “one good dam.” Instead, the great triumphs of his long career were his successes in killing a few stupid projects.

The last stop is Australia, where we meet water commissioner Don Blackmore, and get a thorough analysis of his frustrating struggle to keep the dying ecosystem of the Murray-Darling Basin on life support. It’s the continent’s only major river system, but its annual flow is a wee trickle compared to the Amazon. Australia was an especially unsuitable place to transplant the British way of life, and many experiments have fallen far short of their lofty goals, agriculture for example. Much of the continent is arid, droughts are common, the ancient soils are low in nutrients, and the supply of fresh water is far from dependable.

Before the colonial invasion, thirsty Australian forests prevented most precipitation from reaching the water table in the Murray Basin. When the white lads chopped down 15 billion trees to create cropland, the water table surged upward, as much as 75 feet (23 m), mobilizing the salts stored in the soil, and poisoning large areas of land. The soils in the basin contain 100 billion tons of salt. It would be a terrible place to attempt large-scale irrigation, but they did.

Radical reductions of water diversions would slow the growing damage, but without water, farming is impossible. Climate change presents a new wild card. It could add major strains to a system that’s already staggering.

Leslie spent a day with an Aborigine man, Tom Trevorrow. He lives in the Coorong, a 90-mile (145 km) lagoon near the mouth of the Murray. When he was young, the land was thriving with abundant wildlife. Today, with 75 percent of the water diverted upstream, the Coorong is very salty, and the habitat for birds, fish, and trees is devastated. He wants the dams removed. “The River is a living thing. When you start interfering with it, everything dies.”

Aborigines managed to survive with an unrestricted free-flowing river for 50,000 years. They survived because they learned how to live with the land, an extremely intelligent strategy. They were not possessed with unhealthy impulses to temporarily control and exploit nature. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the powerful wisdom that our ancestors forgot — wisdom that we damn well need to remember if humankind is to have any chance for sticking around for a while.

This book is a powerful parable. Readers are given a backstage tour of the hideous world behind the dazzling magic show of endless growth and sustainable development. The heroes of our culture, the wealthy pioneers of progress, without their makeup and glittering costumes, are sad creatures, like spoiled two-year olds.

Every single one of those 45,000 dams will die, sooner or later. About 5,000 large dams are more than 50 years old. As they age, the costs of maintenance rise, eventually eliminating profits. Investors must make an important decision — should they abandon the dam, or come up with billions of dollars to safely decommission it? It often costs more to decommission a major hydropower dam than it did to build it.

Many dams are nearly impossible to safely decommission. Exactly where do you dispose of billions of tons of accumulated sediment, mud often loaded with pollutants? Abandoned dams become the responsibility of taxpayers, who may not have the expertise, funds, or desire to safely decommission them. Earthquakes may decommission some dams. So might terrorists or wars. Old age and normal decay will certainly remove many.

The good news here is that we enjoy a surplus of super-important lessons to learn. We currently have access to outstanding tools for learning and teaching. We have a ridiculously out-of-balance culture to practice on, and little to lose. We have been presented with a fabulous opportunity to become the most beloved generation of ancestors ever.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Nina Danza

Water is the new Oil

Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2018

Water scarcity is here and every person needs to learn and act on water conservation for the future of a livable planet. This book is definitely an eye opener and will help you understand the impacts to humans and our planet over water supply in several major locations. The book goes through water supply in 3 settings and each are described from many angles. For example, the third setting is all about Murray River in southern Australia and the author gives background of the weather/climate, native people history, plant and animal existence so the reader has knowledge and can make more intelligent conclusions on the things that follow. The book goes on, by following a leading person in the Australian water sector, describing changes and policy made by users and government parties for water supply on the river, and the project impacts and outcomes. Though the book ends ca 2005, a great deal of the Australian scenario is still relevant
today such as achieving a balance of water consumption between agriculture and environment sustainability. Solutions have not been achieved. The 4 star is given because only the very technical water resources people will stay glued to this book. Nevertheless, the book is an important resource to learn about what has been tried and how to move forward in solving water conflicts in our future.

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Becky

Not sure what the point is...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 5, 2020

Verified Purchase

This gives an interesting account but I have to agree with the review that criticises the lack of citations. It's also unclear what the point of the book is. There's not much in the way of conclusion or even a basic analysis of the situation.

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