Aqua Shock - Susan Marks

Early Reviewer review.

This book appears to be a rushed attempt to quickly publish a number of facts, statistics, and Internet resources related to various topics concerned with water available for human consumption and a few other uses. It's a complex topic, and unfortunately, the author gets bogged down in minutiae, poorly organizes them, and doesn't synthesize the key concepts. She fails to focus on the biggest water consumption usages (e.g. energy and agriculture production) or make connections between how individuals can impact those usages even if not directly involved in those sectors. Instead, she presents tired old facts associated with personal water conservation that have proven to not be effective at moving us any closer to a solution. She also fails to recognize non-economic or indirect values that water can have - e.g. ecological, food (e.g. fish) and other natural resources (maybe one day algal biofuels), aesthetic, recreational (except kayaking), etc. These major flaws have been described in more detail in other reviews.

There is a distinct lack of narrative, analysis, voice, or even journalistic hook to grab readers' attention. What a shame, since water topics can be wildly interesting, personal, and controversial. This book is 'just the facts, ma'am', and often in bullet point format – a la a dull PowerPoint. The introductory chapter was so bent on cramming factoids in that the first 30 pages turned me off from the book for six months. Only out of sheer guilt and commitment to the Early Reviewers program have I even opened it up again at all. From the second chapter onwards the bullet points were generally reserved for an end-of-chapter review (I assume - it wasn't labeled as such). Additionally, sprinkled throughout there were seemingly random “Water Facts” and sidebar boxes that appeared to me to be extra notes she had made which she didn’t really know where to include. There was even a figure (1.2) that didn’t even have a figure associated.

The utility of this book is somewhat elusive. It certainly doesn’t make for a compelling narrative. If it’s page-turning (I read about half of it last night), for me it was because it wasn’t saying anything new or adding anything to the discussion. Other reviewers have suggested it might be ok for an introductory class. I think it might actually be intended for those with absolutely no background or understanding (or even interest) in where we get water from, how its used/abused, or why it might be controversial. If you have read or heard anything about water in the last twenty years, you can probably skip this book. It’s possible, I suppose, that these facts and numbers may spark interest in someone who has never ever given a second thought about the tap. Possibly, this repository of websites and factoids could be useful for someone who wants to snag a few for a talk or presentation when they are largely unfamiliar with the topic. Or it could be a resource for a school report. But a poor quality school report is pretty much what the book reads like overall. ( )

I'm pretty certain the reason I received this one through ER is because I own and enjoyed Reisner's Cadillac Desert. While that book is 23 years old, with a revision 16 years ago, it remains a much better book on water development and water policy in the US and in the west in particular.

Aqua Shock reads like a high school text book. If you don't mind dry but cheery prose wrapped around innumerable bullet point lists and interesting fact boxes it probably isn't a bad introduction to water issues. Unfortunately I'm a little past the introductory stage, and I'm looking for the author to put together a compelling narrative - even in my non-fiction - not just list of fact after fact after fact. A number of the factoids are deep-links (if something that is text-only can be said to be a link) to web pages, and given the fact that web sites change structure and web pages are ephemeral, I expect that the useful life of may parts of this book will be much less than 25 years. ( )

This book is an okay primer on water issues, but I found many things problematic with the book, first of which was the ~8th grade reading level of the book which I found somewhat annoying to read.

The biggest problem I have with Aqua Shock is the hopelessly bipartisan and individualistic approach it takes to water issues. Marks brings up important issues such as water: commodity or right, and then details the opinions of both sides without really digging in to the fact that if water is a commodity, and only the rich own it, what happens then? If water is on the "free market" and is prone to wild speculation like every other market ever, and starts to cost hundreds of dollars a gallon, what happens then? She quotes a guy who owns water rights somewhere out west, and he states that owning the water is a great source of wealth for him, and he will one day pass that on to his daughters. Well great, but wouldn't it be better if everybody could enjoy the right to drink something they need to survive?

Marks also mentions bottled water, and how it takes a lot of water to create the energy to make the plastic from petroleum, to ship the water, etc. She mentions that bottled water isn't as regulated as tap water. However, she then says "to be fair, the International Bottled Water Association is quick to point out that bottled water containers are 'fully recyclable.'" I notice the scare quotes around "fully recyclable" but Marks never explains that plastic inherently is NOT recyclable, but is instead down cycled. She also doesn't mention that the vast majority of plastic water bottles aren't recycled but thrown out and wind up in landfills and the Pacific Gyre. She also doesn't mention that the IBWA will do everything in its power to ensure that bottle bills on bottled water do not pass in any state they are brought up in.

I also disliked the scary tone Marks took when discussing the rights of Native Americans to water on their reservations. A treaty allowed Native Americans to have senior water rights on their reservations, which I think is the least thing a country which systematically set out to eradicate them, and then left them to ever smaller parcels of land can do.

Marks also almost completely fails to mention the huge problems with water wasting in agriculture. Only one small figure mentions that beef uses almost 4,000 gallons of water to produce per kg (versus 500 for 1 kg of grain). That's a huge amount of water considering the amount of beef that's consumed in this country. If you also consider that poultry and pigs take much more water to produce than grains, then that's also a lot of water that could be conserved if people reduced or eliminated their meat consumption. Marks also fails to mention entirely that fertilizer and pesticides are dumped in massive quantities into our waterways as a result of industrial agriculture, and that we would do well to support organic farming initiatives if we want to have a more sustainable approach to food and water safety.

Finally, Marks approach to solving our water problem is totally individualistic, with maybe a little help from government incentives. Xeriscaping, low-flow faucets and eco-friendly toilets are apparently the way out of this. No mention that those options aren't available for the majority of urban dwelling folks who live in apartments. No mention that agriculture and industry uses more water than individuals anyway, and perhaps giving up (at the very least) red meat would do more to save water than giving up showers for a year. No mention that industry should be fully responsible for cleaning up the toxins they have put, and continue to put into the water supply. No mention of an overall reduction in consumption that would reduce energy and water usage in general. Marks recommends desalination without ever bringing up the problems associated with it (high cost, massive energy use, threat to marine environments, possibility for corporate control of water, etc). ( )

Susan J. Marks’ Aqua Shock: The Water Crisis in America certainly addresses an important topic, one that has been receiving attention in the Great Plains for at least the past fifteen to twenty years and one that has recently been receiving attention nationwide. The book itself presents the information about this dwindling resource but largely seems to be a compendium of what can be found on the Internet about the topic. One thing the book lacks is a strong narrative. It isn’t necessary to include anecdotes from the author’s experience, but as a reader I would like to see the author relating her impressions and observations as she travels to some of the locations representative of the water crisis in this country. The inclusion of bulleted information quickly becomes tiring and frustrating. In including quotations from various authorities, Marks gives the impression of having interviewed people like “Bill Waldrop, a Tennessee-based hydrologist who has been studying water and environmental quality issues since the early 1970’s” or “Hugh Hurlow, senior geologist for the Utah Geological Survey.” The Chapter Notes, however, don’t reference these interviews and are simply a list of Internet sites, which causes me to believe that Marks has pulled these quotes from those links without having picked up the phone or having made a trip away from her computer. I have to wonder, too, what audience Marks is addressing. Early in the book, she defines words like aquifer as “underground water supplies,” peninsula, “meaning that it is surrounded on three sides by water,” and brackish, “salty,” but doesn’t define a word like desalination, which I suspect needs to be defined if the intended audience isn’t familiar with a word as common as peninsula. Perhaps Aqua Shock: The Water Crisis in America is meant only for libraries so that someone needing the research can pull information from one or two chapters to satisfy a school assignment. ( )

I must say, Aqua Shock lives up to everything it promises. It's highly informative, offers information on just about every aspect of the water crisis in America, and is easy to read. If the book fails to state quickly and effectively the answer to my mother's question, it's because there is no quick and effective answer . Water rights and usage in America are as complex and difficult as you'd expect, but Marks does a good job of trying to sort through the mess.

I only have two problems with Aqua Shock. One is that she sometimes reuses examples. Fairly minor, but did get annoying at one point. The other is, in my opinion, the book's major flaw: it reads like a junior high earth science textbook. There are literally chapter reviews and little asides labeled "Water Tales" and "Water Facts." They come complete with a little graphic. Some of them are in small boxes I'd expect to see in a sidebar somewhere.

All things considered, this is a good, solid book. If it's not "ripping" or "engaging" that's because the topic in and of itself is not considered such. But the book succeeds very well in being an easily accessible primer to the water crisis in America. ( )