There’s something in the water

Environmental alarmism is nothing new in Dam Nation, but it’s more and more obvious that the free-market approach to solving problems through technology can’t work fast enough to prevent large-scale disaster

By Donna Blumenfeld
Published: September 19th, 2007 | 2:33pm

When it comes to global water supplies, we are so fucked. The essay writers who contributed to Dam Nation: Dispatches from the Water Underground may come from different perspectives, but their collective message is loud, clear, and consistent.

The first section, titled “Up Shit Creek and How We Got There,” documents the disasters resulting from years of lopsided short-term decisions about who gets to use water and where it comes from. Dams have been instrumental in endangering ecosystems and displacing huge populations. The building of Three Gorges Dam alone, the largest in the world, has forced more than a million Chinese peasants out of their homes.

The things don’t even last that long, anyway: Those that don’t fill up with silt are eventually prone to structural weaknesses that render them useless. Even as pressure from international lending organizations like the World Bank leads developing nations to build bigger dams, the negative consequences of pursuing first-world lifestyles become more obvious.

If you’ve gotten this far in the book, you’ll probably start to feel bad, but keep reading. Thankfully, the rest of the essays are devoted to more hopeful topics. For the garden activist, there’s a wealth of charmingly low-tech plans for eco-toilets and backyard wetlands for purifying graywater (the stuff that usually runs down your shower and sink drains and straight into the sewer, if you live in the U.S.). On another level, the story of peasant farmers living in protest villages on the tops of dams in Thailand is a reminder that activism and conservation is not a choice but a necessity in many parts of the world.

Several essays recount how the diverse Indian tribes living along the Klamath River in California have joined forces to bring down dams in order to protect their endangered salmon populations. The Klamath tribes’ traditional stewardship of the ecosystems that sustain their communal life is held up in stark contrast with the utilitarian view of nature that has held sway since the colonizing of the Americas.

Environmental alarmism is nothing new, but it’s more and more obvious that the free-market approach to solving problems through technology can’t work fast enough to prevent large-scale disaster. Sustainable solutions must come from the experience and creativity of all the people affected by current unsustainable practices. Dam Nation is a magnificent demonstration of how that might work all over the world.

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ABOUT THE BOOK:
Dam Nation: Dispatches from the Water Underground (Soft Skull Press)
Edited by Cleo Woelfle-Erskine, July Oskar Cole, Laura Allen
336 pages
List Price: $19.95