A doubtful river

the long version

"In A Doubtful River, photographers Robert Dawson and Peter Goin and essayist Mary Webb explore the ways the river's multifarious users relate to the region's aridity and the precious waters of the Truckee. Dawson's and Goin's photographs record images of the Truckee's course from pine-clad mountains to the sagebrush-covered vastness of the high desert and the ways the river and the land beside it have been used and reshaped by human needs, greed, and carelessness. Webb's essays offer a verbal counterpoint, focusing on the people who depend on and adjudicate the river's water. Based on interviews and extensive research, the narratives evoke the viewpoints of people whose connections to the river are as direct as that of the Federal Water Master or as tenuous as a Reno housewife trying to maintain a green lawn in the midst of a seven-year drought. The sum of the elements of this book is a memorable picture of the complexity of water allocation in a region where conflicting traditions about the uses of the land and its resources, a rapidly growing population, and limited supply make water the most precious commodity of all."--BOOK JACKET.