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Resurrection: Glen Canyon and a New Vision for the American West
Writer Annette McGivney explores the controversy and the history of water politics in the American Southwest through the lens of the re-emergence of Glen Canyon due to an ongoing drought. More than 125 large images by photographer James Kay capture the beauty of the legendary canyons of Glen Canyon as they emerge into the light of day for the first time in nearly 40 years. Each chapter opens with a journal excerpt that personalizes the Glen Canyon story, and the book concludes with a list of recommended hikes in the area that will draw outdoor enthusiasts to reemerging attractions.
Throughout her account, McGivney stresses the need for a new model of living in the American West -- the U.S. Department of the Interior must shift its water policy to meet changing needs and Americans must live more sustainably, especially in the arid West.
Resurrection eloquently demonstrates why Americans should stand behind the renewal of Glen Canyon and accord it protection as a national park-both to honor the area as a national treasure and to preserve it for future generations.
* Published in partnership with Glen Canyon Institute, an NGO with a membership of 3,000 dedicated to making Glen Canyon a national park
* Includes an appendix of recommended hikes
Throughout her account, McGivney stresses the need for a new model of living in the American West -- the U.S. Department of the Interior must shift its water policy to meet changing needs and Americans must live more sustainably, especially in the arid West.
Resurrection eloquently demonstrates why Americans should stand behind the renewal of Glen Canyon and accord it protection as a national park-both to honor the area as a national treasure and to preserve it for future generations.
* Published in partnership with Glen Canyon Institute, an NGO with a membership of 3,000 dedicated to making Glen Canyon a national park
* Includes an appendix of recommended hikes
- GenresEnvironment
176 pages, Paperback
First published March 9, 2009
About the author
Annette McGivney
9 books52 followersAnnette McGivney is an award-winning investigative journalist and author based in Cortez, Colorado. Plastic Shaman is her sixth book and publishes in September 2026. Her previous book, Pure Land, about the murder of Tomomi Hanamure in Grand Canyon, won the National Outdoor Book Award in 2018. Pure Land was the debut selection for Outside magazine’s book club in 2017 and named by the magazine on a list of “outdoor books that shaped the last decade.”
Annette is a frequent contributor to the Guardian, Outside and Arizona Highways; her articles focus on Southwest culture, the environment and Indigenous issues. She is a professor emeritus in Journalism at Northern Arizona University where she taught for two decades. Annette is also the founder of the non-profit Healing Lands Project, which is managed by Grand Canyon Youth, and provides guided wilderness trips to underserved populations. Annette’s next book, titled Lucky, explores the unique, life-affirming relationship between humans and dogs.
For more, go to: www.annettemcgivney.com
Annette is a frequent contributor to the Guardian, Outside and Arizona Highways; her articles focus on Southwest culture, the environment and Indigenous issues. She is a professor emeritus in Journalism at Northern Arizona University where she taught for two decades. Annette is also the founder of the non-profit Healing Lands Project, which is managed by Grand Canyon Youth, and provides guided wilderness trips to underserved populations. Annette’s next book, titled Lucky, explores the unique, life-affirming relationship between humans and dogs.
For more, go to: www.annettemcgivney.com
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 2, 2015
There is really not much more in the environmental space that I enjoy reading like a good solid impassioned plea for the restoration of Glen Canyon.
As a child growing up on the East Coast I had never even heard of Glen Canyon. My first awareness of Glen Canyon and the monstrosity known as the Glen Canyon dam was in either late high school or early college when somehow Edward Abbey got on my radar screen and I read (and loved) The Monkey Wrench Gang.
Now, I have read Resurrection by Annette McGivney and I'm still solidly on the side of those who want the dam removed. This book is persuasive for two reasons 1) She lays out a compelling argument that with the drought and the reemergence of formerly submerged areas we have the first opportunity in a generation to see some of what is under Lake Powell and when people see the beauty hidden under that stagnant water they'll agree the best course is to drain the lake and move the water to Lake Mead and restore Glen Canyon. As she points out, the dam is obsolete as a water storage tank and as a power source (since Lake Powell is holding about half of its capacity and at that level the dam cannot even be relied on to create electricity.) Additionally the silt is displacing the water which compounds the problems. 2) This book is persuasive because in addition to good persuasive text, there are pictures, oh the pictures. Side by side photos showing exactly what is happening at Lake Powell and how the water level has dropped. Some of these pictures you literally have to see to believe.
McGiveney also does not shy away from issues of Western water politics (which if you have any awareness of, is a strange, sordid business of back room deals money exchanges, political threats and sticking it to the red man.) She also addresses the issue of the jobs created by the Glen Canyon NRA. I love her idea to just turn it into another National Park (it would have the dual positive impact of stabilizing visitation and protecting the canyon) Just to give you a taste of what is in this book I'm going to quote sections of my favorite passage from the book.
"But don't get the idea that Denver taps will run dry without Lake Powell. When the Bureau [of Reclamation] talks about curtailing use, it's not municipal use--that's a scare tactic." says University of Utah political science professor Daniel McCool. [...] No cities are going to run out of water even in drought.[...] Of the water being used 90% goes to agricultural irrigation rather than to municipal use. [...] Mining, ranching and agricultural interests comprise less than 3% of Utah's economy but use 85% of the state's water."
If only McGivney had stopped there this book would be perfect. After this is where the book falls apart. She spends 90% of this books essentially arguing the point above that the wasteful and absurd agricultural use of water in the west (particularly in the Imperial Valley in CA) is what is wasting the water of the West. All of this made possible by the tangled net of government water/farming subsidies. There would be more than enough water for everyone living here, even with lawns and pools if only we weren't growing acre upon acre of alfalfa. (This 90% earned the book the 5 stars.) Then comes the discussion of Anthem AZ. She unsuccessfully attempts to undo her OWN argument by decrying the fact that Pulte Homes (parent company of Del Webb) built Anthem, a master planned community of 1200 homes north of Phoenix and complaining about the waste of water and unchecked suburban sprawl. I'm sorry, didn't you just spend 150 pages explaining how there is enough water here for everyone if we would just lessen the amount of agricultural water usage? To me this section felt like she was pandering to the holier than thou environmental crowd who is just anti-growth. Period. If she had been making a restoration of wild places argument ok, sure, bitch about Anthem, but this is a book about why Glen Canyon should be preserved and why we don't need Lake Powell (which is my opinion is an eye sore anyway.) Why do we have to then listen to this argument about Anthem? The builders bought the water rights from the Ak-Chin Indians fair and square. Nothing is going to stop the tide of people flowing into the desert. Just be thankful they are all not trying to engage in industrial scale farming and move on. Also, she says in this section that in Anthem every effort has been made to erase the fact that this is a desert, that there are no trails leading out of the community into the desert. This is pure utter ignorance. Anthem is very close to the Sonoran Desert Preserve which is home to miles and miles of multi use desert trails. Additionally just north of Anthem is untouched desert with lots of trails, any look at Google Earth will show that.
So all in all a great book that bails out on its own greatness at the tail end so as not to alienate the crowd that would ask "How you can talk about water in the West and not scold people about their pools and lawns?"
As a child growing up on the East Coast I had never even heard of Glen Canyon. My first awareness of Glen Canyon and the monstrosity known as the Glen Canyon dam was in either late high school or early college when somehow Edward Abbey got on my radar screen and I read (and loved) The Monkey Wrench Gang.
Now, I have read Resurrection by Annette McGivney and I'm still solidly on the side of those who want the dam removed. This book is persuasive for two reasons 1) She lays out a compelling argument that with the drought and the reemergence of formerly submerged areas we have the first opportunity in a generation to see some of what is under Lake Powell and when people see the beauty hidden under that stagnant water they'll agree the best course is to drain the lake and move the water to Lake Mead and restore Glen Canyon. As she points out, the dam is obsolete as a water storage tank and as a power source (since Lake Powell is holding about half of its capacity and at that level the dam cannot even be relied on to create electricity.) Additionally the silt is displacing the water which compounds the problems. 2) This book is persuasive because in addition to good persuasive text, there are pictures, oh the pictures. Side by side photos showing exactly what is happening at Lake Powell and how the water level has dropped. Some of these pictures you literally have to see to believe.
McGiveney also does not shy away from issues of Western water politics (which if you have any awareness of, is a strange, sordid business of back room deals money exchanges, political threats and sticking it to the red man.) She also addresses the issue of the jobs created by the Glen Canyon NRA. I love her idea to just turn it into another National Park (it would have the dual positive impact of stabilizing visitation and protecting the canyon) Just to give you a taste of what is in this book I'm going to quote sections of my favorite passage from the book.
"But don't get the idea that Denver taps will run dry without Lake Powell. When the Bureau [of Reclamation] talks about curtailing use, it's not municipal use--that's a scare tactic." says University of Utah political science professor Daniel McCool. [...] No cities are going to run out of water even in drought.[...] Of the water being used 90% goes to agricultural irrigation rather than to municipal use. [...] Mining, ranching and agricultural interests comprise less than 3% of Utah's economy but use 85% of the state's water."
If only McGivney had stopped there this book would be perfect. After this is where the book falls apart. She spends 90% of this books essentially arguing the point above that the wasteful and absurd agricultural use of water in the west (particularly in the Imperial Valley in CA) is what is wasting the water of the West. All of this made possible by the tangled net of government water/farming subsidies. There would be more than enough water for everyone living here, even with lawns and pools if only we weren't growing acre upon acre of alfalfa. (This 90% earned the book the 5 stars.) Then comes the discussion of Anthem AZ. She unsuccessfully attempts to undo her OWN argument by decrying the fact that Pulte Homes (parent company of Del Webb) built Anthem, a master planned community of 1200 homes north of Phoenix and complaining about the waste of water and unchecked suburban sprawl. I'm sorry, didn't you just spend 150 pages explaining how there is enough water here for everyone if we would just lessen the amount of agricultural water usage? To me this section felt like she was pandering to the holier than thou environmental crowd who is just anti-growth. Period. If she had been making a restoration of wild places argument ok, sure, bitch about Anthem, but this is a book about why Glen Canyon should be preserved and why we don't need Lake Powell (which is my opinion is an eye sore anyway.) Why do we have to then listen to this argument about Anthem? The builders bought the water rights from the Ak-Chin Indians fair and square. Nothing is going to stop the tide of people flowing into the desert. Just be thankful they are all not trying to engage in industrial scale farming and move on. Also, she says in this section that in Anthem every effort has been made to erase the fact that this is a desert, that there are no trails leading out of the community into the desert. This is pure utter ignorance. Anthem is very close to the Sonoran Desert Preserve which is home to miles and miles of multi use desert trails. Additionally just north of Anthem is untouched desert with lots of trails, any look at Google Earth will show that.
So all in all a great book that bails out on its own greatness at the tail end so as not to alienate the crowd that would ask "How you can talk about water in the West and not scold people about their pools and lawns?"
June 4, 2009
Outstanding >> hope for Glen Canyon!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews