## Metadata - Author: [[Erica Gies]] - Full Title: Water Always Wins - Category: #books ## Highlights - Figuring out what water wants—and accommodating its desires within our human landscapes—is now a crucial survival strategy. ([Location 102](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09QD5T7Y3&location=102)) - Humans have sought to control our environment throughout history. In looking for an antonym for control, I found chaos, lawlessness, mismanagement, neglect, weakness, powerlessness, helplessness. ([Location 128](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09QD5T7Y3&location=128)) - So what does water want? Most modern humans have forgotten that water’s true nature is to flex with the rhythms of the earth, expanding and retreating in an eternal dance upon the land. ([Location 161](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09QD5T7Y3&location=161)) - The engineered response to water scarcity has been to bring in more water from somewhere else. But desalinating water or transporting it long distances consumes a lot of energy: in California, for example, the giant pumps that push water southward from the Sacramento Delta are the state’s largest user of electricity. ([Location 177](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09QD5T7Y3&location=177)) - When we live long distances from our water, we don’t understand the limits of that supply, so we’re less likely to conserve. We also don’t understand how the water we use supports its local ecosystem. ([Location 181](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09QD5T7Y3&location=181)) - By constraining natural water systems, we have claimed space to build towns, cities, and agricultural empires. But the idea that we can control water has always been a fantasy. Now that reality is sharpening into focus as our gray infrastructure—not designed to cope with the water extremes we are seeing today—is increasingly failing. ([Location 470](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09QD5T7Y3&location=470)) - As author Marc Reisner puts it in his classic tome on Western water, Cadillac Desert: “With huge dams built for him at public expense, and irrigation canals, and the water sold for a quarter of a cent per ton—a price which guaranteed that little of the public’s investment would ever be paid back—the West’s yeoman farmer became the embodiment of the welfare state, though he was the last to recognize it.”) ([Location 886](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09QD5T7Y3&location=886)) - As the studies of fish on floodplains show, the same water can serve both wildlife and people—often better than when smaller portions of different water are allocated to each. Shifting from a scarcity mindset to one of shared abundance is hard; it goes against our dominant culture. But scientists who study microcritters are learning more about how a healthy ecosystem supports a healthy water supply ([Location 995](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09QD5T7Y3&location=995))