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Overview
Americans continue to coexist with nature only warily, in spite of our vaunted environmental stewardship. Nowhere is this complex relationship more visible than in the Mississippi River delta in South Louisiana, the country's largest unpreserved wetland. Here, more than three million acres of marshes and swamps nurture more seafood and produce more oil and gas than any other region of the country except Alaska. Yet this expanse of raw natural beauty, almost unknown outside the region, is in danger of collapse. New Orleans is in particular danger as sea levels rise and the city sinks, leaving tens of thousands of inhabitants to face the consequences if a horrific storm should strike.
Holding Back the Sea intimately and eloquently exposes the vulnerability of this stark land that spreads along the Gulf Coast, as it literally vanishes — at rate of twenty-five square miles per year, an area the size of Manhattan — so starved for lack of nutrients, so eroded away by ever more severe storms, and so dredged for canals that it is on the verge of being swallowed by the rising Gulf of Mexico. Holding Back the Sea bears witness to an environmental crisis of staggering proportions that not only threatens this coast but has plunged the people who depend on it into a moral quagmire.
Christopher Hallowell uses this crisis as a window through which to clearly and comprehensively examine a cultural characteristic, or flaw, that Americans have historically exhibited: the reluctance to recognize the finiteness of nature — as much a part of this country's history as is its people's independence — while at the same time proclaiming their devotion to it. In Louisiana, this emotional split of using while abusing threatens the entire region's economic foundations and has profound implications for the rest of the country. Louisiana is not alone; its predicament stands beside an array of environmental case studies: clear-cutting in Virginia and Tennessee, exhausting water resources in the Southwest, polluting Chesapeake Bay, filling in wetlands around San Francisco Bay and Long Island Sound, and fouling the Great Lakes.
Through the varied use of narrative voice and rich description, Hallowell, a journalist, writer, and educator, brings into focus South Louisiana's dilemma through the people involved — from engineers to politicians to scientists to fishermen — to show both the marsh's and the people's fragility and vitality. There is no more important topic than the way we use nature and our natural resources and our willingness to defer to nature. Holding Back the Sea is at the heart of that conversation.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewSwamps and marshes absorb storms, prevent erosion, cycle water and nutrients, and provide habitat for fish and shellfish. Hundreds of thousands of acres of American wetlands have already disappeared. Here, Christopher Hallowell takes us on a tour of one of the most threatened such areas, the Louisiana delta, where an astonishing 80 percent of annual American wetlands loss takes place, mostly due to poor flood-control practices. Years of centralized planning by the Army Corps of Engineers to build up the Mississippi River's levees robbed the bayous of nutrients, which are normally deposited in the form of rich river silt. Meanwhile, rising sea levels are eating up the marsh at a staggering rate.
Hallowell is sympathetic to the intertwining of nature and culture that has long characterized this region. Oystermen, shrimpers, trappers, and hunters have wrested a living from the delta for centuries. And of, course, there is New Orleans, perilously poised between the river and gulf and thus seriously vulnerable to storms and floods. Only now are people realizing how important these wetlands are to the livelihoods of entire communities. Cajun culture, one of Louisiana's most popular exports, is rooted in the rich loam of the bayous. Hallowell's encounters with a variety of colorful characters, from a trapper named Peanut Michel to George Barisich, "the prince of shrimpers," bring out the issues of resource management that undergird the situation in a poignant way.
Much of the book looks at government efforts to stop the bleeding. But bureaucracy and dissension in the ranks still interfere with existing efforts -- which Hallowell compares, in any case, to "Band-Aids of mud, rock, and hubris" that only blunt the inexorable surge of water. His case study is really about how our attitudes towards nature are under pressure as we bump up against the carrying capacity of the New World. From other coastal ecosystems like the Chesapeake Bay to the deserts of the Southwest, "the cornucopia is emptying" -- and hard choices requiring compromise and sacrifice are needed if we are to continue living on this land. (Jonathan Cook)