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Quote by Charles Bowden

“Humans build their societies around consumption of fossil water long buried in the earth, and these societies, being based on temporary resources, face the problem of being temporary themselves.”

Quote by Charles Bowden

Book:Killing the Hidden Waters

Work

Killing the Hidden Waters

This book delves into the impact of human activity on the environment, focusing on the depletion of natural water sources and the resulting ecological and social disruptions. more

Author

Charles Bowden was an American author known for his in-depth reporting on the life along the US-Mexico border. His works often focused on the lives of marginalized individuals and criminal activities, renowned for their unique perspective and profound insight. more

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“Industrial agriculture now accounts for over half of America's water pollution. Two years ago, Pfiesteria outbreaks connected with wastes from industrial chicken factories forced the closure of two major tributaries of the Chesapeake and threatened Maryland's vital shellfish industry. Tyson Foods has polluted half of all streams in northwestern Arkansas with so much fecal bacteria that swimming is prohibited. Drugs and hormones needed to keep confined animals alive and growing are mainly excreted with the wastes and saturate local waterways.”

“It is a fact that the entire Kentucky River system, which the central part of the state complacently depends upon for its future water, is deteriorating rapidly because of strip mining, because of bad farming, because of industrial and agricultural pollutants, because of urban sewage. It is deteriorating, that is to say, because almost nobody cares, or cares to know, where water comes from, so long as it keeps coming.”

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“The assumption is that people so ignorant and thoughtless and silly and greedy may simply call upon the Army Corps of Engineers in order to receive a clean and abundant supply of water from reservoirs in the mountains. A much likelier outcome is that they will be drinking an ever stronger mixture of sewage and mine acid and mud and cropspray and various other defecations of the industrial paradise.”

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“The procedure has a strange Alice-in-Wonderland quality. The reservoir was created as a public water supply, yet the community, probably unconsulted about the sportsmen's project, is forced either to drink water containing poisonous residues or to pay our tax money for treatment of the water to remove the poisons - treatments that are by no means foolproof.”

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Book:Raids on the Unspeakable

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Book:Wilderness Days

Source: Wilderness Days

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Book:Collected Poems, 1917-1982

Source: Collected Poems, 1917-1982

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