Unsettled Waters: Rights, Law, and Identity in the American West: 5 (Critical Environments: Nature, Science, and Politics)

Description

In the American West, water adjudication lawsuits are adversarial, expensive, and lengthy. Unsettled Waters is the first detailed study of water adjudications in New Mexico. The state envisioned adjudication as a straightforward accounting of water rights as private property. However, adjudication resurfaced tensions and created conflicts among water sovereigns at multiple scales. Based on more than ten years of fieldwork, this book tells a fascinating story of resistance involving communal water cultures, Native rights and cleaved identities, clashing experts, and unintended outcomes. Whether the state can alter adjudications to meet the water demands in the twenty-first century will have serious consequences. Cover Unsettled Waters Title Copyright CONTENTS List of Illustrations, Maps, and Tables Preface Acknowledgments Introduction. The Cultures of Water Sovereignty in New Mexico PART ONE. UNSETTLED WATERS: HOW WATER ADJUDICATION WORKS, WHAT IT DOES, AND WHAT HAPPENS WHEN IT FAILS 1. How Local Waters Become State Water 2. Aamodt, Dammit! Big Trouble in a Small Basin 3. Abeyta: Taos Struggles, Then Negotiates 4. Local Settlements Connect What State Adjudication Severed PART TWO. THE PRODUCTION OF WATER EXPERTISE: THE ADJUDICATION-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 5. Changing Measures: How Expert Metrics Change Water 6. Working for the Adjudication-Industrial Complex 7. New Water Agents and Actors in Civil Society PART THREE. ADJUDICATING THE UNKNOWN FUTURE OF NEW MEXICO’S WATER 8. City Water, Native Water, and the Unknown Future 9. Beyond Adjudication: Nature’s Share of Water 10. Water Coda, with No End in Sight Notes References Index