Helen Ingram is the director of the Udall Center at the University of Arizona and coauthor of Water and Poverty
in the Southwest.
Laney, Nancy K. : Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum
Nancy K. Laney is the deputy director of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson.
Gillilan, David M. : Colorado State University
David M. Gillilan is a research associate in the Department of Earth Resources at Colorado State University
in Fort Collins.
Review
"A crucial, significant addition to the literature about border regions and resource planning."
--Robert Gottlieb, coauthor of Thirst for Growth
"For the first time a team of scholars has systematically and comprehensively explained the integral character
of water development and utilization in a border city. . . . A case study of considerable depth."
--Stephen P. Mumme, Colorado State University
University of Arizona Press Web Site, November, 2000
Summary
Among all natural resource and environmental problems between the United States and Mexico, water has been the
most troublesome, with ongoing historic contests over water supply becoming superseded by new controversies over
water quality.
Divided Waters analyzes the politics of water management along the U.S.-Mexico border, using the case of
Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora as a window on the problems and possibilities involved. The authors explore
the water problems that Ambos Nogales shares with larger border communities--surface and groundwater contamination,
inadequate and insecure supplies, inequitable distribution of resources, flooding, and endangered riparian habitats--considering
both the physical characteristics of the water supply and the coping mechanisms of the people who make use of it.
They review the prevailing confusion of laws, administrative practices, and political incentives, then recommend
the design elements they believe must be included before successful improvements can occur at both the institutional
and the resource management levels.
