Where The Waters Begin

Where the Waters Begin takes us up the Nisqually side of Mount Rainier through the traditional beliefs of the Nisqually people and their relationship to the bountiful natural resources the mountain offered them. The Nisqually are the original stewards of the prairies, mountains, and rivers west of the mountain on lands that are now Thurston and Pierce Counties. Living in a more natural world, without the complexities of today, they developed a coexistence with nature that included respect and appreciation of its beneficent forces as well as fear of its darker sides. The deep connection the Nisqually people developed with the mountain they called Ta-co-bet is best related through their traditional stories. Author and Nisqually tribal historian Cecelia Svinth Carpenter brings those stories to life here in Where the Waters Begin: the Traditional Nisqually Indian History of Mount Rainier.

After the fall of the Tammanwamis, Wyeast and Pahtoe go their separate ways. But with their departure a new threat looms and only Tacoma can see a way to counter it. The brothers must come together or the tribes and the gorge will be lost forever.

“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 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 readers 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 U.S.–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.

In ten impassioned essays, veteran Texas environmental advocates and conservation professionals step outside their roles as lawyers, lobbyists, administrators, consultants, and researchers to write about water. Their personal stories of what the springs, rivers, bottomlands, bayous, marshes, estuaries, bays, lakes, and reservoirs mean to them and to our state come alive in the landscape photography of Charles Kruvand. Allied with the Texas Living Waters Project (a joint education and policy initiative of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Environmental Defense Fund, among others), editor Ken Kramer joins his fellow activists in a call to keep rivers flowing, to protect wildlife habitat, and to save tax dollars by using water efficiently and sustainability. INSIDE THIS BOOK:Introduction: the Living Waters of Texas—Ken KramerWhere the First Raindrop Falls—David K. LangfordSpringing to Life: Keeping the Waters Flowing—Dianne WassenichHooked on Rivers—Myron J. HessFalling in Love with Bottomlands: Waters and Forests of East Texas—Janice BezansonOn the Banks of the Bayous: Preserving Nature in an Urban Environment—Mary Ellen WhitworthA Taste of the Marsh—Susan Raleigh KaderkaBays and Estuaries of Texas: An Ephemeral Treasure?—Ben F. Vaughan IIIRio Grande: Fragile Lifeline in the Desert—Mary E. KellyLeaving a Water Legacy for Texas—Ann Thomas HamiltonTexas Water Politics: Forty Years of Going with the Flow—Ken Kramer

When the Sudanese civil war reaches his village in 1985, 11-year-old Salva becomes separated from his family and must walk with other Dinka tribe members through southern Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya in search of safe haven. Based on the life of Salva Dut, who, after emigrating to America in 1996, began a project to dig water wells in Sudan. By a Newbery Medal-winning author.

The Code of Federal Regulations is a codification of the general and permanent rules published in the Federal Register by the Executive departments and agencies of the United States Federal Government.

Data collected from June 1971 to April 1974 along the Trans-Alaska pipeline route. 2,226 arctic grayling were tagged.

The Code of Federal Regulations is a codification of the general and permanent rules published in the Federal Register by the Executive departments and agencies of the United States Federal Government.