Where the Water Goes

Life and Death Along the Colorado River

By: David Owen

Narrated by: Fred Sanders

Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

An eye-opening account of where our water comes from and where it all goes.

The Colorado River is an essential resource for a surprisingly large part of the United States, and every gallon that flows down it is owned or claimed by someone. David Owen traces all that water from the Colorado’s headwaters to its parched terminus, once a verdant wetland but now a million-acre desert. He takes listeners on an adventure downriver, along a labyrinth of waterways, reservoirs, power plants, farms, fracking sites, ghost towns, and RV parks, to the spot near the US-Mexico border where the river runs dry.

Water problems in the Western United States can seem tantalizingly easy to solve: Just turn off the fountains at the Bellagio, stop selling hay to China, ban golf, cut down the almond trees, and kill all the lawyers. But a closer look reveals a vast man-made ecosystem that is far more complex and more interesting than the headlines let on.

The story Owen tells in Where the Water Goes is crucial to our future: How a patchwork of engineering marvels, byzantine legal agreements, aging infrastructure, and neighborly cooperation enables life to flourish in the desert - and the disastrous consequences we face when any part of this tenuous system fails.

©2017 David Owen (P)2017 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Owen has the keen observation of a birder combined with the breezy writing to draw you in with unusual insights.... As Owen shows, the Colorado River is a great, sad, terrifying, possibly hopeful example of the pervasive, permanent mark people are making on the planet.” (The New York Times Book Review)

“Wonderfully written...Mr. Owen writes about water, but in these polarized times the lessons he shares spill into other arenas. The world of water rights and wrongs along the Colorado River offers hope for other problems.” (Wall Street Journal)

“Owen is effortlessly engaging, informally parceling out information about acre-foot allotments alongside sketches of notable, often dreadful figures in the river's history... Where the Water Goes doesn't pretend to solve the problems Owen acknowledges are overwhelming and, in some ways, impossible. It's a restless travelogue of long-term human impact on the natural world, and how politics and economics have as much to do with redirecting rivers as any canal. But with its historical eddies, policy asides, and trips to the Hoover Dam, at heart Where the Water Goes is about water as a function of time, and a reminder that we're running out of both.” (NPR.org)

Big picture of the river and its challenges

Well-written and interesting account of the incredibly complex issues surrounding the Colorado river and the states that depend on it. I see now why entire books have been written about water politics in the West. Owen’s book is more of an overview, with vivid visual details, interviews with experts, and broad strokes covering the environmental, economic, legal, and political issues. I got the information I needed to be a better user and witness of the Colorado River.

Informative

Great book. Very informative and I felt non biased. Really eye opening and thought provoking. The narrator was a little dry and could sound robotic at times but did not deter me from listening to this book.

Easy Read on a tough topic

I wish the map would of been displayed on the audio book along with the chapter titles.

Western Water - A Must Listen

David Owen has written a very informative and entertaining book on water in the western USA; the confusing and often contradictory laws of water rights, evolution of the culture surrounding water and the serious predicament we are in. One may think this is likely to be a dry [sic], boring text, and you would be wrong.

Great overview of the problems facing the river.

The author does a good job balancing the pros and cons of water use and mitigation along the Colorado River while staying impartial. This is a good snapshot of the basics along the river while quoting more in depth articles and research.

The narration was okay with the narrator pronouncing Spanish words quite well, but then said "salt-on" during the chapter on the Salton Sea. The narrator was also a bit quiet and airy which made it easy to mind wander at times.

Very informative and good narration

I was happy to learn all the intricacies and complexities of managing the Colorado river.

Who Knew!?

I’ve lived in California, and then Colorado for my entire life, I always knew we needed to respect and conserve water, but I had no idea how extensive and ultimately threatening the situation is. This is a book that every person connected by the Colorado river should read, understanding and working together is the only hope of our grandchildren.

Must read

Well balanced and interesting. Important reading for everyone in this country as well as the world.

People, agriculture, and water - well balanced

An incredibly informative and well-balanced book that analyzes the agricultural, mineral, and residential needs of people, jobs and the history of water.

Great addition to many other co rover books.

Great addition to the many other books on water in the west and the CO river. Narrator regularly mispronounced name and places, which was a distraction, and may be a nuisance to those familiar with the west