Water Follies
Robert Glennon
"The excessive pumping of our aquifers has created an environmental catastrophe known to only a few."
So begins Robert Glennon’s Water Follies (Island Press, $25), which takes us from the overwatered blueberry fields of Maine to The Nature Conservancy’s embattled Cosumnes River Preserve in California, exposing along the way the country’s Rube Goldberg approach to managing its precious groundwater. Glennon’s Water Follies is a nationwide sampler of rivers and lakes sucked dry, salmon without water, and species increasingly under siege--sacrificed to the likes of Perrier water and suburban sprawl. Especially significant, says Glennon, is "the unlimited human capacity to ignore reality."
— William Stolzenburg
