Water as the ultimate sink: Linking fresh and saltwater history

dc.contributor.authorMüller, Simone M.
dc.contributor.authorStradling, David
dc.date.accessioned2019-06-07T01:40:10Z
dc.date.available2019-06-07T01:40:10Z
dc.date.issued2019-05
dc.description.abstractThis article draws marine and freshwater historiographies together through the narration of the anti-water-dumping movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Our research concerns the disposal of substances—pollution—into bodies of water and the growing public concern about the ecological and human consequences of those substances. One of us comes to the study of water from the perspective of river history, the other from that of ocean history. We follow scientific and policy debates, as well as public outrage over dredge spoil disposal in the Great Lakes and the disposal of chemical weapons, sewage and industrial waste in the Atlantic Ocean, linking both examples to the history of open-water dumping generally. Two fundamental qualities of water on earth—its tendency toward liquidity and opacity—are essential to the stories we tell. For the actors in our stories, these two qualities helped define water and influenced how they interacted with the ecosystems for which they expressed concern. We conclude, then, that these are stories that should be told together, that the presence of salt in one story matters much less than the presence of water in both. Our goal here is to explain why water historiography has been bifurcated and to make a plea for its unification.en_AU
dc.identifier.issn22053204en_AU
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1885/163992
dc.language.isoen_AUen_AU
dc.publisherANU Press
dc.rightsAuthor/s retain copyrighten_AU
dc.rights.licenseCreative Commons licence (CC BY-NC-ND; creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)en_AU
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/en_AU
dc.sourceInternational Review of Environmental Historyen_AU
dc.titleWater as the ultimate sink: Linking fresh and saltwater historyen_AU
dc.typeJournal articleen_AU
dcterms.accessRightsOpen Access via publisher websiteen_AU
local.bibliographicCitation.issue1en_AU
local.bibliographicCitation.lastpage41en_AU
local.bibliographicCitation.startpage23en_AU
local.contributor.authoremailanupress@anu.edu.auen_AU
local.identifier.citationvolume5en_AU
local.identifier.doi10.22459/IREH.05.01.2019.03en_AU
local.identifier.uidSubmittedByu4026086en_AU
local.publisher.urlhttps://press.anu.edu.au/en_AU
local.type.statusMetadata onlyen_AU

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