By exploring the history and culture of water and approaching the subject from a human perspective, de Châtel takes a new angle on the much-discussed questions of water scarcity in the Middle East. Unlike other books on the subject that provide specialized geopolitical, economic, and hydrological analyses, Water Sheikhs and Dam Builders presents the reality of water scarcity through the eyes of those who have to confront the problem on a daily basis.

This book examines the role of private firms in the American water and wastewater industry. As more water infrastructure shifts from public- to private-sector control, vendors, consultants, and facilities are taking on more importance. Lewis D. Solomon presents an historical overview of water supply and treatment needs and the role of the government, including how water policy has been crafted. He argues that water scarcity is becoming a problem due to groundwater depletion, contamination, and patterns of consumption. He examines the impact of climate change on water availability and quality considering voluntary conservation programs and mandatory restrictions for water use. Solomon points to how for-profit firms can use technology to increase water supply. He describes what privatization would look like in practice and reviews evidence from two case studies. Solomon proposes privatization as a viable response to America's water crisis that can address both scarcity and capital problems. America's Water and Wastewater Crisis presents a careful examination of how the water industry has operated in the United States in the past and how it may work as we move into the future. This book is invaluable to environmental specialists, businessmen, and government officials.

The MacArthur grant–winning environmental justice activist’s riveting memoir of a life fighting for a cleaner future for America’s most vulnerable A Smithsonian Magazine Top Ten Best Science Book of 2020 Catherine Coleman Flowers, a 2020 MacArthur “genius,” grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, a place that’s been called “Bloody Lowndes” because of its violent, racist history. Once the epicenter of the voting rights struggle, today it’s Ground Zero for a new movement that is also Flowers’s life’s work—a fight to ensure human dignity through a right most Americans take for granted: basic sanitation. Too many people, especially the rural poor, lack an affordable means of disposing cleanly of the waste from their toilets and, as a consequence, live amid filth. Flowers calls this America’s dirty secret. In this “powerful and moving book” (Booklist), she tells the story of systemic class, racial, and geographic prejudice that foster Third World conditions not just in Alabama, but across America, in Appalachia, Central California, coastal Florida, Alaska, the urban Midwest, and on Native American reservations in the West. In this inspiring story of the evolution of an activist, from country girl to student civil rights organizer to environmental justice champion at Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative, Flowers shows how sanitation is becoming too big a problem to ignore as climate change brings sewage to more backyards—not only those of poor minorities.

In the middle of the Mojave Desert, Las Vegas casinos use billions of gallons of water for fountains, pirate lagoons, wave machines, and indoor canals. Meanwhile, the town of Orme, Tennessee, must truck in water from Alabama because it has literally run out. Robert Glennon captures the irony—and tragedy—of America’s water crisis in a book that is both frightening and wickedly comical. From manufactured snow for tourists in Atlanta to trillions of gallons of water flushed down the toilet each year, Unquenchable reveals the heady extravagances and everyday inefficiencies that are sucking the nation dry. The looming catastrophe remains hidden as government diverts supplies from one area to another to keep water flowing from the tap. But sooner rather than later, the shell game has to end. And when it does, shortages will threaten not only the environment, but every aspect of American life: we face shuttered power plants and jobless workers, decimated fi sheries and contaminated drinking water. We can’t engineer our way out of the problem, either with traditional fixes or zany schemes to tow icebergs from Alaska. In fact, new demands for water, particularly the enormous supply needed for ethanol and energy production, will only worsen the crisis. America must make hard choices—and Glennon’s answers are fittingly provocative. He proposes market-based solutions that value water as both a commodity and a fundamental human right. One truth runs throughout Unquenchable: only when we recognize water’s worth will we begin to conserve it.

Americans see water as abundant and cheap: we turn on the faucet and out it gushes, for less than a penny a gallon. We use more water than any other culture in the world, much to quench what’s now our largest crop—the lawn. Yet most Americans cannot name the river or aquifer that flows to our taps, irrigates our food, and produces our electricity. And most don’t realize these freshwater sources are in deep trouble. Blue Revolution exposes the truth about the water crisis—driven not as much by lawn sprinklers as by a tradition that has encouraged everyone, from homeowners to farmers to utilities, to tap more and more. But the book also offers much reason for hope. Award-winning journalist Cynthia Barnett argues that the best solution is also the simplest and least expensive: a water ethic for America. Just as the green movement helped build awareness about energy and sustainability, so a blue movement will reconnect Americans to their water, helping us value and conserve our most life-giving resource. Avoiding past mistakes, living within our water means, and turning to “local water” as we do local foods are all part of this new, blue revolution. Reporting from across the country and around the globe, Barnett shows how people, businesses, and governments have come together to dramatically reduce water use and reverse the water crisis. Entire metro areas, such as San Antonio, Texas, have halved per capita water use. Singapore’s “closed water loop” recycles every drop. New technologies can slash agricultural irrigation in half: businesses can save a lot of water—and a lot of money—with designs as simple as recycling air-conditioning condensate. The first book to call for a national water ethic, Blue Revolution is also a powerful meditation on water and community in America.

In December 2002, a group of specialists on water resources from the United States and Iran met in Tunis, Tunisia, for an interacademy workshop on water resources management, conservation, and recycling. This was the fourth interacademy workshop on a variety of topics held in 2002, the first year of such workshops. Tunis was selected as the location for the workshop because the Tunisian experience in addressing water conservation issues was of interest to the participants from both the United States and Iran. This report includes the agenda for the workshop, all of the papers that were presented, and the list of site visits.

This book is focused exclusively on water problems in the 48 U.S. states. The authors provide an accessible overview of the work of many federal, state and academic researchers and water system administrators whose investigations have focused on the state of water and the water crisis now accelerating in the United States. David McNabb and Carl Swenson seek to bring to a wider audience some of the current research findings and data on the perilous state of the United States’ surface and groundwater resources during this time of climate change and the extreme drought taking place in many sections of the nation. Descriptions of the water resource systems are based on research and the subsequent findings published by water scientists in the United States Geological Survey, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Corps of Engineers and water related agencies of the Departments of Agriculture and of the Interior and state and local water management agencies.

The brand new manual provides step-by-step guidance to determine revenue requirements, analyze rates, develop a financial plan, and design a better rate structure -- even with limited resources and data. Written for small water systems (defined as serving a population of up to 10,000) it focuses on the unique attributes of small systems as related to financial planning and rate design, with the understanding that most data is contained in the current customer billing system, and merely needs to be massaged. With details plus a sample case study, it helps develop a rate structure that emphasizes simplicity and ease of billing, while at the same time recognizes cost recovery and equitability. Also covered are communications with the public, which is integral to a successful rate restructuring, regulatory approval, system development funding, and rate phase-in.

Water quantity—too much in the case of floods, or too little in the case of droughts—grabs public attention and the media spotlight. Water quality—being predominantly invisible and hard to detect—goes largely unnoticed. Quality Unknown: The Invisible Water Crisis presents new evidence and new data that call urgent attention to the hidden dangers lying beneath water’s surface. It shows how poor water quality stalls economic progress, stymies human potential, and reduces food production. Quality Unknown examines the effects of water quality on economic growth and finds upstream pollution lowers growth in downstream regions. It reveals that some of the most ubiquitous contaminants in water, such as nitrates and salt, have impacts that are larger, deeper, and wider than has been acknowledged. And it traces the damage to crop yields and the stark implications for food security in affected regions. An important step toward tackling the world’s water quality challenge is recognizing its scale. The world needs reliable, accurate, and comprehensive information so that policy makers can have new insights, decision making can be evidence based, and citizens can call for action. The report calls for a paradigm shift that emphasizes safer, and often more cost-effective remedies that prevent pollution by combining smarter policies with newer technologies. A key message of Quality Unknown is that such solutions exist and change is possible.

The treatment of eating disorders remains controversial, protracted, and often unsuccessful. Therapists face a number of impediments to the optimal care fo their patients, from transference to difficulties in dealing with the patient's family. Treating Eating Disorders addresses the pressure and responsibility faced by practicing therapists in the treatment of eating disorders. Legal, ethical, and interpersonal issues involving compulsory treatment, food refusal and forced feeding, managed care, treatment facilities, terminal care, and how the gender of the therapist affects treatment figure centrally in this invaluable navigational guide.