Working Watersheds: Water and Energy in the Lackawanna Valley

A personal narrative, an examination of literary texts, and a history of the Lackawanna Valley region, Bill Conlogue’s Working Watersheds explores how water has circulated in the former anthracite capital of the world. Conlogue not only recounts water’s use in anthracite mining and textile making, but also investigates its resulting pollution. He delves into the current natural gas boom, which threatens groundwater, and concludes with hopes of environmental renewal and restoration.

Offering a fresh way to think about the Anthropocene, this distinctive history of water and coal in the Lackawanna Valley discusses how both water abundance and scarcity might play out as global temperatures rise. Working Watersheds is designed to trigger debates about the nature of history, the significance of literature, and the importance of linking person, place, and planet in an era of climate change.

Bill Conlogue is Professor of English at Marywood University and author of Undermined in Coal Country: On the Measures in a Working Land, Here and There: Reading Pennsylvania’s Working Landscapes, and Working the Garden: American Writers and the Industrialization of Agriculture.