As the Democratic congressman from Colorado's Fourth District from 1949 to 1973, Wayne Aspinall was an advocate of natural resource development in general and reclamation projects in particular. This book focuses on Aspinall's congressional career to clarify his role in influencing western water policy. Sturgeon provides a detailed account of the political machinations and personal foibles that shaped Aspinall's efforts to implement water reclamation legislation in support of Colorado's Western Slope, along the way shedding new light on familiar water controversies.

As the Democratic congressman from Colorado's Fourth District from 1949 to 1973, Wayne Aspinall was an advocate of natural resource development in general and reclamation projects in particular. A political loner, considered crusty and abrasive, he carved a national reputation by helping secure the passage of key water legislation—in the process clashing with colleagues and environmentalists alike. Fiercely protective of western Colorado's water supply, Aspinall sought to secure prosperity for his district by protecting its share of Colorado River water through federal reclamation projects, and he made this goal the centerpiece of his congressional career. He became chair of the House Interior Committee in 1959 and ruled it with an iron fist for more than a dozen years—a role that placed him in a key position to shape the nation's natural resource legislation at a time when the growing environmental movement was calling for a sharp change in policy. This full-length study of Aspinall's importance to reclamation in the West clarifies his role in influencing western water policy. By focusing on Aspinall's congressional career, Stephen Sturgeon provides a detailed account of the political machinations and personal foibles that shaped Aspinall's efforts to implement water reclamation legislation in support of Colorado's Western Slope, along the way shedding new light on familiar water controversies. Sturgeon meticulously traces the influences on Aspinall's thinking and the arc of his career, examining the congressman's involvement in the Colorado River Storage Project bill and his clash with conservationists over the proposed Echo Park Dam; recounting the fight over the Frying Pan-Arkansas Project and his decision to support diverting water out of his own district; and exploring the battles over the Central Arizona Project, in which Aspinall fought not only environmentalists but also other members of Congress. Finally he assesses the Aspinall legacy, including the still-disputed Animas-La Plata Project, and shows how his vision of progress shaped the history of western water development. The Politics of Western Water portrays Aspinall in human terms, not as a pork-barrel politician but as a representative who believed he was protecting his constituents' interests. It is an insightful account of the political, financial, and personal variables that affect the course by which water resource legislation is conceived, supported, and implemented—a book that is essential to understanding the history and future of water in the West.

The book studies the relationship between large dams and water scarcity in Kutch. It argues that water scarcity is not merely natural, but is embedded in the social and power relations shaping water access, use and practices. Scarcity is portrayed as natural rather than human induced and this naturalisation of scarcity is beneficial to those who are powerful. This is a significant book in the light of the growing water crisis in India, and the world.

Back in print for the first time in over ten years, this classic account of the numerous struggles--national, state, and local--that have occurred over western American water rights since the late 1800s is thoroughly expanded and updated to trace the continuing battles raging over the West's most valuable, and contentious, resource.

Nearly fifty years ago, the Bureau of Reclamation proposed building a dam at the confluence of two rivers in Central Arizona. While the dam would bring valuable water to this arid plain, it would also destroy a wildlife habitat, flood archaeological sites, and force the Yavapai Indians off their ancestral home. The Struggle for Water is not only the fascinating story of this controversial and ultimately thwarted public works project but also a study of rationality as a cultural, organizational, and political construct. In the 1970s, the three groups most intimately involved in the Orme Dam—younger Bureau of Reclamation employees committed to "rational choice" decision making, older Bureau engineers committed to the dam, and the Yavapai community—all found themselves and their values transformed by their struggles. Wendy Nelson Espeland lays bare the relations between interests and identities that emerged during the conflict, creating a contemporary tale of power and colonization, bureaucracies and democratic practice, that asks the crucial question of what it means to be "rational."

"The management of public lands in the West is a matter of long-standing and oft-contentious debates. The government must balance the interests of a variety of stakeholders, including extractive industries like oil and timber; farmers, ranchers, and fishers; Native Americans; tourists; and environmentalists. Local, state, and government policies and approaches change according to the vagaries of scientific knowledge, the American and global economies, and political administrations. Occasionally, debates over public land usage erupt into major incidents, as with the armed occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016. While a number of scholars work on the politics and policy of public land management, there has been no central book on the topic since the publication of Charles Davis's Western Public Lands and Environmental Politics (Westview, 2001). In The Environmental Politics and Policy of Western Public Lands, Erika Allen Wolters and Brent Steel have assembled a stellar cast of scholars to consider long-standing issues and topics such as endangered species, land use, and water management while addressing more recent challenges to western public lands like renewable energy siting, fracking, Native American sovereignty, and land use rebellions. Chapters also address the impact of climate change on policy dimensions and scope. The Environmental Politics and Policy of Western Public Lands is co-published with Oregon State University Open Educational Resources, who will release an open access edition alongside this print edition"--

In the American West, water adjudication lawsuits are adversarial, expensive, and lengthy. Unsettled Waters is the first detailed study of water adjudications in New Mexico. The state envisioned adjudication as a straightforward accounting of water rights as private property. However, adjudication resurfaced tensions and created conflicts among water sovereigns at multiple scales. Based on more than ten years of fieldwork, this book tells a fascinating story of resistance involving communal water cultures, Native rights and cleaved identities, clashing experts, and unintended outcomes. Whether the state can alter adjudications to meet the water demands in the twenty-first century will have serious consequences.

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online. For more information, please read the site FAQs.

"Walton first uses his magnifying glass to capture images of struggle in a California valley during a century and a half of transformation, then inverts it to scrutinize the American state, popular politics, and collective action in general. The maneuver is bold, the outcome stimulating."—Charles Tilly, New School for Social Research "A passionate and first rate historical adventure. The plot is as intricate, fascinating, and full of intrigue and detail as a Dickens or a Tolstoy novel."—John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War

Award-winning journalist rafts down the Green River, revealing a multifaceted look at the present and future of water in the American West. The Green River, the most significant tributary of the Colorado River, runs 730 miles from the glaciers of Wyoming to the desert canyons of Utah. Over its course, it meanders through ranches, cities, national parks, endangered fish habitats, and some of the most significant natural gas fields in the country, as it provides water for 33 million people. Stopped up by dams, slaked off by irrigation, and dried up by cities, the Green is crucial, overused, and at-risk, now more than ever. Fights over the river’s water, and what’s going to happen to it in the future, are longstanding, intractable, and only getting worse as the West gets hotter and drier and more people depend on the river with each passing year. As a former raft guide and an environmental reporter, Heather Hansman knew these fights were happening, but she felt driven to see them from a different perspective—from the river itself. So she set out on a journey, in a one-person inflatable pack raft, to paddle the river from source to confluence and see what the experience might teach her. Mixing lyrical accounts of quiet paddling through breathtaking beauty with nights spent camping solo and lively discussions with farmers, city officials, and other people met along the way, Downriver is the story of that journey, a foray into the present—and future—of water in the West.