The Man Who Thought He Owned Water

On the Brink with American Farms, Cities, and Food

By: Tershia d'Elgin

Narrated by: Margaret Wakeley

Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

The Man Who Thought He Owned Water is author Tershia d’Elgin’s fresh take on the gravest challenge of our time—how to support urbanization without killing ourselves in the process. The gritty story of her family’s experience with water rights on its Colorado farm provides essential background about American farms, food, and water administration in the West in the context of growing cities and climate change.

When her father bought his farm—Big Bend Station—he also bought the ample water rights associated with the land and the South Platte River, confident that he had secured the necessary resources for a successful endeavor. Yet water immediately proved fickle, hard to defend, and sometimes dangerous. Eventually, those rights were curtailed without compensation. Through her family’s story, d’Elgin dramatically frames the personal-scale implications of water competition, revealing how water deals, infrastructure, transport, and management create economic growth but also sever human connections to Earth’s most vital resource. She shows how water flows to cities at the expense of American-grown food as rural land turns to desert, wildlife starves, the environment degrades, and climate change intensifies.

The book is published by University Press of Colorado. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

©2016 University Press of Colorado (P)2023 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"A compelling biographical account.... This is a book that I highly recommend." (Colorado Central Magazine)

"A must read for all of us water consumers who once fantasized that Colorado would never change." (Valley Courier)

"A well-written defense of rural life and a plea for readers to take seriously the interconnectedness between cities and farms." (Journal of Historical Geography)