Water, Water Anywhere

By Ben Loehnen    |   Monday, April 20, 2015 - Off the Shelf When Charles Fishman’s The Big Thirst was published in 2011, one critic paused in his praise to point out that the book came at “an odd moment.” At the time, the snowpack at Lake Tahoe was 165 percent of normal. Today, state officials anticipate the statewide snowpack to be 6 percent of normal. Just four years later, as California faces a historic drought, Governor Jerry Brown has declared, “We are in a new era.” Investigative journalist Charles Fishman foresaw and detailed this “era” in a book that spans time and geography, and presciently explored how all of us need to rethink the way we use and value water. Most of us don’t think about water at all. It’s cheap. It’s available. It’s seemingly limitless. Our daily life: We take long showers. We water our lawns. We do the dishes. We eat almonds with abandon (... READ MORE