Dam debate

E: The Environmental Magazine, July-August, 2006 by Rachel Anderson

The World Bank, once a heavy booster of dams, has decreased support of new major dam projects significantly over the last 35 years as current dams become increasingly problematic. Author Jacques Leslie visited heavily dammed areas in India, southern Africa and southeast Australia to research the issue with engineers, activists and executives.

Leslie chronicles these experiences in Deep Water (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, $25), a narrative, firsthand account of how major dam projects have affected people and environments. Leslie is careful not to declare sides early on, and lauds some of the achievements these projects have earned. However, when everything is laid on the table, people were displaced, species overpopulated or reached extinction, and diseases and famines resulted. "Humans believed they could vanquish nature," Leslie declares, "and found themselves vanquished instead."