Book Review: "The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust in California", by Mark Arax

       Well folks, let's look again at California: a one-party state run by Democrats bent on making this place a 3rd world country come hell or no water(drought).  Now that the OLD JESUIT, Jerry Brown, of the infamous Brown Family, has retired with his long-suffering wife Ann Gust, to the Sacramento Valley fringe near Willows,  his successor,  San Francisco's former mayor Gavin Newsom, has the reins.   Where this teamster driver is likely to lead the State is anybody's guess.  Early indications are such that nobody is privy to Mr. Newsom's vision(other than the White House w/i 5 years).
       Author Mark Arax, a valley native born into a family of Armenian immigrants, has written an amazing study of the San Joaquin Valley:  it's history, its context in the larger realm of California, its land, and its water.  Like Mr. Arax, the Mayor is a California native son.  That fact does not contain much cachet anymore excepting among certain archeological students.  Over many years, osmosis of history and current conditions affords us natives with a perspective often absent among recent immigrants.  The Mayor's ancestors on both sides were immigrants, a few arriving just after the Civil War, some at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th.  Some arrived by ship, some by train, and a few by unknown means(horseback or on foot?)   They were not farmers, and avoided the fertile fields of the Central Valley, settling in cities where opportunities presented in abundance.
     Mr. Arax' focus turns on water:  where it is and where it was; who owns it now; how the State of California seized some of it;  how the federal government seized some more of it; and how a few individual land owners got most of it in the end.  It's a fascinating story.  Mark Arax studied the issues for over 9 years, traveling the landscapes of his youth, crisscrossing the almost-flat valley floor looking for linkages among the many participants in the quest for more of the precious commodity most city dwellers take for granted.   Since much of that commodity is controlled by a few individuals, he made the effort necessary to interview these important players to include their views and opinions about the agricultural interests that dominate so much of the San Joaquin Valley today.  He was not on a vindictive mission to expose these men and women, but to write a fact-based compilation of what he saw through the eyes of a very experienced journalist.  He wrote for many years for the Los Angeles Times newspaper, covering California.   His book is timely, given that former Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a legal right of the counties to take control of groundwater found within their respective boundaries.  The counties were given 20 years to make the local rules that most certainly will affect ag interests wherever they are codified and imposed on all landowners,, big and small.  This same effort came to naught over 20 years ago, but legislators in Sacramento backed down as those well owners came out of the proverbial woodwork to protest any attempt to remove an accepted right.  Now it's different.  Many current owners will pass away before this happens, reducing a tradition of protest against a taking.   The progeny of these owners no doubt have left the dirt and dust to settle in some faraway city known as a Tech Hub.  Corporations will no doubt be the opponents of rules that will continue the decline of small owners and small people without the clout of investment banks and Wall Street types who have been very successful in usurping the rights of landowners to stay on their land to live close to the dirt they grew up on.
        Mr. Arax does a fine job in portraying the current masters of the land: the owners of the almond orchards; the owners of pistachio orchards; the owners of tangerine groves; and the owners of vast water rights to state, federal, and groundwater sources to irrigate their vast plantings.  We are educated on plant genetics; agronomy; biology, and other factors included in the hierarchy of modern farming.  The University of California at Davis receives considerable attention for its role as the academic basis for much of the changes wrought by the farmers.  The ag worker and his and her plight is accorded appropriate space to expose the ongoing conditions that remain a challenge for all involved parties.  That chapter is not a pretty picture even today. 
       I recommend this book as one of the best regional efforts on California in many years: a story told by a veteran reporter who knows his subject intimately, warts and all.
5 Stars
*****