The Slow Disaster: Water Scarcity, Climate Change, and Public Science in the California Desert

Emily Brooks
Anthropology
UC Irvine

Like much of the Southern California desert, the small rural town of Borrego Springs is predicted to run out of water gradually within one generation. Despite spending 30 years and over $5 million on scientific and policy solutions, Borrego Springs residents continue to face rapidly increasing water use, escalating environmental effects, and continued controversy over how to understand and respond to the unfolding disaster. Using archival research and qualitative social science methods, this project explored the emerging science and cultural politics of this slow ecological disaster. As a case study, Borrego Springs represents a watershed moment in California-based environmental science and natural resource management. While there is already significant archival research on water-centered ecology building on both the municipal- and state-level, this project captured the on-the-ground practices, social processes, and cultural models that are often left undocumented and lost to history.