Water: The twisted, tortured tale of California's gold

"Food grows where water flows"

By California State University, Bakersfield

September 16^th, 2019

You see the signs up and down Interstate 5 through the great Central Valley: Food grows where water flows. A simple, pointed sentiment, easy to take in while racing past at 80 miles an hour. But nothing is simple about water in California. Wars have been fought over it, fortunes have been made - and unmade - and Kern County owes its dominance as the No. 1 agricultural region in the country to plentiful supplies that irrigate our almonds, grapes and carrots.

The story of agriculture, industry and development in the Valley is the story of water - and how to get more of it.

Best-selling author and veteran journalist Mark Arax has spent his career chronicling the Central Valley and its unique culture and history, with an emphasis on generations of powerful farming families and how they have shaped the politics, development and destiny of the region.

Arax will be the featured speaker Oct. 3 at the Walter W. Stiern Library, as part of the “Water Presents” lecture series. The writer will discuss his current book “The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California.” It will take place at 6 p.m. on Oct. 3, Walter W. Stiern Library at CSU Bakersfield. Admission is free.

"To invent California, we had to invent the grandest water-moving system in the history of man,” Arax said. “The system we built was and is magnificent. It created three world-class cities and the most intensive farming region ever. But the system is now cracking, and it won't see us into a future of more houses and more nut trees, that's for sure. Something will to have to give. What I do in this book is go inside those cracks."

Arax will be joined by veteran journalist Lois Henry, who explored the often opaque, complex world of water at The Bakersfield Californian, where she was an award-winning journalist for nearly 30 years. Henry is launching her own website, SJV Water, to provide news and analysis of the resource as demands on its finite supply increase, aquifers are drained and nitrates pollute drinking water.

"The amazing thing about 'The Dreamt Land' is that it's practically a real-time living history of how power and money bend water,” Henry said. “The wheeling and dealing that Mark details in this book where you think 'Wow, I can't believe they got away with that!' well, it's all still happening today. Believe it."

Arax and Henry, both Fresno natives, will discuss the issues surrounding water today, the history of water control in the Valley, and what the future holds in a conversational format, while welcoming questions from the audience.

Released in the spring, “The Dreamt Land” has drawn universal critical praise. David Ullin, former book review editor at the Los Angeles Times, said “The Dreamt Land” is the book Arax was born to write.

“Nuanced, deeply researched, and profoundly personal, it offers, through its history of agriculture in California, a deep dive into the soul of the state. Arax has written about rural California for many years. This is his crowning achievement, a work of reportage that is also a work of literature. It belongs on the short list of great books about the state.”

Arax, a former reporter for the Los Angeles times, is author of three other books: “West of the West,” “In My Father’s Name” and “The King of California,” his masterful chronicle of the empire of farming magnate JG Boswell.

Henry is an award-winning journalist who has covered Valley issues like water, agriculture, energy, animal welfare and more over a three-decade career. She will launch SJV Water, an investigative journalism website that will offer news, analysis and insight on water issues facing the Valley and state.

Praise for “The Dreamt Land”

"There’s a new history of water use in California that’s fantastic. It’s called The Dreamt Land. It’s like John McPhee-level writing. It’s really worth it for the writing alone."

— Linda Ronstadt

“A mesmerizing new book that examines the nation’s most populous state through the prism of its most valuable resource: water. Call author Mark Arax, an award-winning journalist, historian and native son of the Central Valley, a Steinbeck for the 21st century.”

— Andy Kroll, Rolling Stone

"[An] exhaustive, deeply reported account... Few other journalists could have written a book as personal and authoritative... As Arax makes plain in this important book, it's been the same story in California for almost two centuries now: When it comes to water, 'the resource is finite. The greed isn't.'"

—Gary Krist, The New York Times Book

Water: The Twisted, Tortured Tale of California’s Liquid Gold

“Arax narrates this tumultuous history skillfully... Water, land and the conjunction of the two have inspired some of California’s most powerful writing: Didion, Mary Austin’s lyrical The Land of Little Rain, Norris Hundley’s authoritative The Great Thirst, William Kahrl’s gorgeous, shamefully out-of-print The California Water Atlas, and, jumping genres, Chinatown, with its water-crazed Mephistopheles, Noah Cross. The Dreamt Land earns its place alongside them."

—Peter Fish, The San Francisco Chronicle

"In his sprawling, provocative book The Dreamt Land, journalist Mark Arax examines California's long-building water crisis with the keen, loving, troubled eye of a native son... The Dreamt Land assumes an urgent, personal tone and incorporates history, memoir and the lives of larger-than-life personalities. Taken together, it is a story biblical in scope and cautionary in tenor."

—Gerard Helferich, The Wall Street Journal

“Former L.A. Times reporter Mark Arax makes a riveting case that this expanse — 450 miles lengthwise from Shasta to Tehachapi; 60 miles across from the Sierra Nevada to the Coastal Range — as much as the world cities on its coast, holds the key to understanding California … a deeply reported work keenly alive to local subcultures.”

—Stephen Phillips, Los Angeles Times

"Mark Arax’s monumental new book on California’s water system underscores the madness that makes the Golden State an agricultural powerhouse. [The Dreamt Land] is a compelling and powerful history of how power and greed shape the land, and Arax has achieved a masterful distillation of how California got here, warts and all."

—Civil Eats

“The Dreamt Land weaves reportage, history and memoir to confront the “Golden State” myth in riveting fashion. No other chronicler of the West has so deeply delved into the empires of agriculture that drink so much of the water. The nation’s biggest farmers–the nut king, grape king and citrus queen–tell their story here for the first time.”

—Chicago Review of Books

"You can't understand California without understanding water, and no one is better at doing that than Mark Arax, whose depth of knowledge about the Central Valley is organic and unparalleled. Plus, he writes like a dream."

—Mark Bittman, author of Food Matters

"The Dreamt Land is the book Mark Arax was born to write. Nuanced, deeply researched, and profoundly personal, it offers, through its history of agriculture in California, a deep dive into the soul of the state. Arax knows the territory; he has written about rural California for many years. This is his crowning achievement, a work of reportage that is also a work of literature. It belongs on the short list of great books about the state."—David L. Ulin, author of Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, and editor of the Library of America’s Collected Didion

"This is a stunning book. Biblical drama played against the harsh sun and earth of California’s Central Valley. Exodus, diaspora, parting the waters, sowing and reaping, Godlike dominion: it’s all in here. The Dreamt Land calls up Steinbeck and Didion, but it rests squarely on its own words, memories, and stories beyond mere comparison."—William Francis Deverell, Director of Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West

"California's relationship to water is defined by such contradictions and complexities, as evidenced by this brilliant work from Arax... Arax's combination of research with memoir gives it the necessary lift and motion to make it compelling, brutal, and consistently hard to put down. "We have run out of tricks, or at least the easy ones," writes Arax at one point of the problem. It is a painful honesty for us to confront, which makes the issue all the more important for readers everywhere to consider. VERDICT: A stunning and uncompromising look at California's man-made water crisis in the context of its complex history of agricultural growth. Highly recommended for those interested in environmental issues and journalistic nonfiction."

—Library Journal (starred)

"A sweeping, engrossing history of his native California focused on the state's use, overuse, and shocking mismanagement of water....Arax reveals the consequences to land and wildlife of generations of landowners who have defiantly dug, dammed, and diverted California's waters."

—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“Arax brings a reporter’s precision of language, a researcher’s depth of perception, and a born storyteller’s voice to this empathetic but unsentimental look at the history, present, and uncertain future of a once-arid region restructured into one of the country’s most productive.”