Thirsty city : politics, greed, and the making of Atlanta's water crisis /

The politics of big-city fights over water supply makes for high drama, as residents of Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and even 19th-century New York City can attest. In this vein, Borden's detailed and well-researched account of Atlanta's feud with neighboring communities and states throughout the Chattahoochee basin rewards the reader eager to learn how one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the nation became the center of a multi-decade squabble over water rights. Decisions by the US Army Corps of Engineers, state and local officials, and others to develop the Apalachicola basin are well documented with up-to-date facts and statistics. Less well-chronicled is the larger meaning of these events (e.g., what Atlanta's struggle tells readers about the exclusivity of urban policy-making with respect to water supply decision-making, or why the public resists demand-side measures to use and manage freshwater more sustainably). Borden's failure to address these larger questions detracts from an understanding of how it is possible for cities in wet regions to commit the same urban planning errors as siblings in arid ones--the most provocative question in this entire case. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers and lower-division undergraduate students. --David L. Feldman, University of California, Irvine