Topic: “Blue Revolution: A Water Ethic for America and Florida”
Santa Fe College is hosting award-winning author and water expert Cynthia Barnett at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 6 in WA-108 (the Health Sciences Annex building) at the Northest Campus, 3000 NW 83rd St.
[Directions: enter campus on NW South Rd. off of NW 83rd St., at the traffic light. WA Building will be your second building on the right, a newish building with palm trees, connected to W Building by a bridge. The presentation is in room WA-108. Park anywhere.]
Americans (and Floridians) see water as abundant and cheap: We turn on the faucet and out it gushes, for less than a penny a gallon. We use more water than any other culture in the world, much to quench what’s now our largest crop –- the lawn. Yet most Americans cannot name the river or aquifer that flows to our taps, irrigates our food and produces our electricity. And most don’t realize their freshwater sources are in trouble.
In her talk, “Blue Revolution: A Water Ethic for America & Florida,” Barnett will describe an illusion of water abundance that has encouraged everyone, from homeowners to farmers to utilities, to tap more and more. She proposes the most important part of the solution is also the simplest and least expensive: a shared water ethic among citizens, government and major water users.
Barnett’s has received very positive reviews for her new book, “Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s water crisis”:
- “Barnett takes us back to the origins of our water in much the same way, with much the same vividness and compassion as Michael Pollan led us from our kitchens to potato fields and feed lots of modern agribusiness.” –Los Angeles Times
- “Eminently sensible … Barnett does not come off as a Cassandra, shrieking about looming cataclysm and dumping figures over her readers’ heads. In ‘Blue Revolution’ she is part journalist, part mom, part historian, and part optimist, and as a result her text comes off as anything but a polemic.” –The Boston Globe
Barnett is a Santa Fe College alumna (’87) who credits Professor Steve Lodle as being one of her earliest writing mentors. A long-time journalist, she has reported on freshwater issues from the Suwannee River to Singapore.
Her previous book, “Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S.,” won the gold medal for best nonfiction in the Florida book awards and was named by The St. Petersburg Times as one of the top 10 books that every Floridian should read.
Her journalism awards include a national Sigma Delta Chi prize for investigative magazine reporting and eight Green Eyeshades, which recognize outstanding journalism in 11 southeastern states. She earned her bachelor’s in journalism and master’s in American history with a specialization in environmental history, both from the University of Florida. She was also the recipient of a Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan, where she spent a year studying freshwater supply.
Her appearance at Santa Fe is being coordinated by Natural Sciences Chair Sture Edvardsson. Please contact him for additional information, 395-5842.
CONTACT:
• Natural Sciences Chair Sture Edvardsson, 352-395-5842 or sture.edvardsson@sfcollege.edu
• Julie Garrett, media relations, for assistance facilitating your story, 352-870-2924 (cell) or 352-395-5430 (office) or julie.garrett@sfcollege.edu