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Fields and Streams: Stream Restoration, Neoliberalism, and the Future of Environmental Science Rebecca Lave. University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA. 2012. 184 pp. Photo, tables, figures, bibliography, index, notes, appendix. $59.95 cloth; $22.95 paper. (ISBN: 978-0-8203-4391-4) (ISBN: 978-0-8203-4392-1)
The two billion dollar a year industry you didn't know about: with a stronghold in the southeast, environmental consultants and state regulators across the U.S. are hard at work trying to turn entrenched, chemical-laden, and otherwise trashed streams back into more valuable habitats. Their efforts are often driven by laws like the Clean Water Act, and frontline reg- ulators at the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers re- quire some kind of scientific input about how streams can be restored, and what counts as good stream restoration. This is far from a simple task. One Dave Rosgen has charged onto the scene, answering with a streamlined vision of streams that has variously enthralled and outraged consultants, scientists, and regulators in the industry. Likewise, it's into this debate that Rebecca Lave wades in her new book, Fields and Streams: Stream Restoration, Ne- oliberalism, and the Future of Environmen- tal Science. She provides not only a voice of reason in the debate, but makes clear by focusing on Rosgen's work that the "Ros- gen Wars" teach us how to understand more broadly the trajectory of environ- mental science today.
The argument in Fields and Streams is that Dave Rosgen's success and his vil- ification are both products of changing political...