March 2012: Drylands Water Infrastructure and the West

“Drylands Water Infrastructure and the West,” landscape photography by Peter Arnold. Text by Hadley Arnold. In Places: Forum of Design for the Public Realm, March 2012.

By definition, water scarcity is the central challenge of sustaining life in arid lands. It’s easy to forget how large that challenge is: Arid and semi-arid lands make up one-third of the earth’s land surface and over one-third of the continental United States. The 20th-century American effort to provide water to these lands in the name of social progress and economic growth has given rise to some of the most spectacular civil engineering feats in history, and has served as one model for water systems internationally.

Read the article and view the photos here.