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Canaries on the rim : living downwind in the West / Chip Ward.
LIBRA GE155.G74 W37 1999
Available from offsite location
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Ward, Chip.
- Series:
- Haymarket series
- The Haymarket series
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Hazardous wastes.
- Environmentalism.
- History.
- Great Basin--Environmental conditions.
- Great Basin.
- Environmentalism--Great Basin--History--20th century.
- Hazardous wastes--Great Basin.
- Ward, Chip.
- Environmentalists--United States--Biography.
- Environmentalists.
- United States.
- Genre:
- Biographies.
- Autobiographies.
- Physical Description:
- 238 pages ; 20 cm.
- Place of Publication:
- London ; New York : Verso, 1999.
- Summary:
- Seeking to raise their children amidst the neighborliness and safety of an American small town, Chip Ward and his wife decided, in the late 1970s, to relocate their family to the seemingly bucolic oasis of Grantsville, Utah. There, nestled amongst the juniper and sage of a postcard-perfect valley on the edge of the Great Basin Desert, an idyllic life was soon punctured by disturbing tales of local sickness and death. Incidences of cancer and defective births were legion in the town, respiratory problems were endemic. A seven year quest to understand Grantsville's hidden history of ecocide followed. Canaries on the Rim is Ward's first-hand chronicle of that journey and a stirring account of how lessons learned in the wilderness were later applied to building opposition to hazardous waste disposal, chemical weapons incineration, industrial pollution, and nuclear waste storage.
- The secret holocaust that is unfolding along the toxic shadow of America's Great Basin Desert is grim, but Ward's colorful and often humorous story is not. Canaries on the Rim is a warning and a call to arms, but it is also a compelling drama and a lively primer on environmental activism. If Civil Action took place in Ed Abbey's West, this is the book that would result.
- Contents:
- 1 Landing Under a Sleeping Rainbow 1
- 2 The Cow That Got Stuck in the Chimney 12
- 3 Landing on the Rim of the Great Basin 34
- 4 MX Marks the Spot 51
- 5 Breakfast Cereal for Two-headed Babies 62
- 6 Cowboys in Gas Masks Find a Damn Good Place to Dump Used Razor Blades 91
- 7 How to Organize Boiling Frogs 119
- 8 Kissing the Army's Ass on the Courthouse Steps at High Noon 149
- 9 Storming the Castle of the Invisible Ecothug 189
- 10 Betting the Ranch at the Nuclear Casino 215.
- ISBN:
- 1859847501
- OCLC:
- 42692040
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