East Bay Dinner: "Water and the California Dream"

Thursday, October 27, no-host cocktails/social hour - 6 pm, dinner - 7:00, program - 8:00, Berkeley Yacht Club, 1 Seawall Drive, at the Berkeley Marina, just one block north of the west end of University Avenue. Ample free parking is available in the Marina parking lots.

It's not surprising for an East Bay Dinner speaker to be a retired park ranger. But when that ranger is also an outstanding scholar with six books under his belt, we can expect an outstanding program

Water has been used to transform California's environment and quality of life. David Carle, author of Water and the California Dream (Sierra Club Books, 2003) and Introduction to Water in California (University of California Press, 2004) will present a program exploring the historical and political decisions that "re-plumbed" this state, shifting water from the Eastern Sierra Nevada, the Colorado River, and Northern California rivers to irrigate farmlands and to provide the foundation for urban growth.

In addition to slides, Carle will show a short video of an advertisement from the 1931 campaign to fund the Colorado Aqueduct - the canal that carries water from the Colorado River to Southern California.

One reviewer of Water and the California Dream wrote: "This outstanding book provides a concise and well-documented environmental history of California as context for the ongoing question: Where will the water come from for the future? Carle's review of California history should be required reading for all students in California schools. The most valuable part of the book, however, is the discussion rarely heard, `What if?' What if the Owens Valley project had not been built? What if the massive water bonds of 1960 had not passed? What would California look like today? These lead to the final discussion, `What should California do for the future?'" (David Bainbridge, in the Journal of Environmental Education.)

Carle's most recent book, part of the California Natural History Guides of the University of California Press, is Introduction to Water in California. In February of 2005, High Country News, described it as "lavishly illustrated with maps and color photos... a sort of field guide to the state's watersheds, canals, reservoirs, groundwater basins, legendary water contamination problems and colossal endangered species issues, and to the ways all these parts intermesh with - or grind against - each other."

A California state-park ranger for 27 years, Carle spent 19 years at the Mono Lake Tufa State Reserve, where he participated in the historic effort to protect that Eastern Sierra inland sea from the effects of the diversion of its watersheds to Los Angeles. Now retired, he still lives by choice near the shores of Mono Lake.

Cost of dinner and program is $22, including tax and tip. For more information, call (510)845-8055. For a reservation, please send your check, payable to "Sierra Club", with your name, your telephone number, and the names of your guests, to:

Jane Barrett
170 Vicente Road
Berkeley, CA 94705.

Attendance is limited to the first 115 reservations received. Reserve early because these programs do fill up. Reservation deadline is Thu., Oct. 20. There is no admittance for program only.

(Carle will present this same program at 7 pm on Wed., Oct. 26, in the Community Meeting Room of the Main Library at 580 Coombs St. in Napa. Admission is free.)