The Dreamt Land
"A vivid, searching journey into California's complicated relationship to its water, from the Gold Rush to today: an epic story of the struggle to overcome the constraints of nature. Mark Arax is from a family of Central Valley farmers, a writer with deep ties to the land, who has watched as the battles over water have intensified even as the state lurches from drought to flood and back again. In The Dreamt Land he travels the state to explore the century-old water distribution system that is straining to keep up with California's relentless growth. This is a heartfelt, beautifully written book about land and the people who work on it, from the gold miners to the ranchers to the small farmers and today's big ag. Since the beginning, Californians have redirected rivers, drilled ever-deeper wells, and pushed the water supplies past their limits. The Dreamt Land brings to life the enterprising figures who have made a fortune off the land, and used that wealth to increase their leverage, as well as the people who have been left behind. It's a story of politics and hubris, but above all it's about the unceasing human ability to make things happen, and to endure in a hostile environment."--Publisher information.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
8mentions
6people
2020–2026years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I recommend folks here read "The Dreamt Land" by Mark Arax. I just started it so it might be a premature recommendation, but it has been doing a great job for me as a new California resident of explaining the interaction between business/agriculture and the desert landscape.
- For a non-fiction look at the topic of water in California - and really the whole shaping of the state - I highly recommend "Dreamt Land".
- IIRC, The excellent book Dreamt Land says 2/3 of California's precipitation falls in the northern 1/3 of the state. But it's the southern part with the ideal climate for agriculture. Hence the largest water movement system in history.
- I'd also recommend The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California by Mark Arax.
- Highly recommend reading The Dreamt Land by Mark Arax if you'd like to learn more about this. The plants should never have been planted. Decades of unregulated groundwater pumping and effectively stolen federal water is feeding what used to be desert. There's no real plan for what happens when the water runs out (which is beginning to happen, evidently); just keep guzzling water while the going's still good.
The current model of farming in California is ultimately doomed; much of the groundwater depleted over the past century cannot be replenished as the ground has subsided and compacted itself after the water was pumped out. Basically the entire Central Valley sank by about 16 feet between 1920-1970 (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/land-subsidence-in-california/s...). Data since then is spotty because we basically stopped monitoring it.
- If this subject is terribly interesting to you, I recommend the book The Dreamt Land.
https://www.amazon.com/Dreamt-Land-Chasing-Across-California...
