The Niger River Basin: A Vision of Sustainable Management Book

As it is sweet, sugarcane is thirsty. To produce a single pound of sugar, it takes 4,000 pounds or 500 gallons of water. Correspondingly, producing a ton of sugar requires 4,000 tons or a million gallons of water. To illustrate the sheer quantity of water involved, a million gallons of water is barely enough to irrigate 100 acres per day.

In addition, whoever, controls water controls all else. With this, Hawaii's sugar barons developed water sources and diverted water from parts of an island to another via a system of tunnels and ditches. The author describes the development of mountain sources of water and the tunnels and ditches that brought it to the sugar plantations. Then she weaves in the history of the sugar industry which changed the subsistence economy of the Hawaiians forever and brought Hawaii into the modern world. Included is much of Hawaii's history, a history told from the perspective of valuable water resources. Diverted water is now a political issue, as many wish to see that water returned to their original locations.

This book is a good read. Done in a simple, straight-forward style, it illustrates the power of the sugar industry with its close ties to the monarchy and, later, the provisional and territorial governments.