On Wednesday’s Access Utah our guest for the hour is Tershia d’Elgin, author of “The Man Who Thought He Owned Water: On the Brink with American Farms, Cities, and Food” (University Press of Colorado).
When Tershia d’Elgin’s father bought his farm—Big Bend Station in Colorado—he also bought the ample water rights associated with the land and the South Platte River, confident that he had secured the necessary resources for a successful endeavor. Water immediately proved fickle, however, hard to defend, and sometimes dangerous. Eventually those rights were curtailed without compensation. Through her family’s story, d’Elgin frames the personal-scale implications of water competition, showing how water deals, infrastructure, transport, and management create economic growth but also sever human connections to Earth’s most vital resource. She argues that water flows to cities at the expense of American-grown food, and that as rural land turns to desert, wildlife starves, the environment degrades, and climate change intensifies.
Tershia d’Elgin is a social activist with deep Colorado roots and a special interest in water policy, water conservation, and the tension between agricultural and metropolitan claims on water. A San Diego–based writer and water resources consultant, she also oversees a working farm on the South Platte River in Colorado with her family.
