Water, Water Everywhere, and Not a Drop to Drink


Polluted New River, Calexico, California (from the California Toxics Project) Twenty-eight years ago today, Congress passed the Water Pollution Control Act.

Photographer Robert Dawson took this photo of the New River in California as part of his California Toxics Project. Dawson has used his photography to serve environmentalist causes for many years. Since 1983, he has been co-director of the Water in the West Project, a collaborative photographic exploration of our culture's relationship to, and use of, water in the arid lands of the American West.

To view other compelling photographs that highlight contemporary American landscape, visit our virtual exhibition, Between Home and Heaven, on our photography website, Helios.

Pictured: Robert Dawson, born 1950, Polluted New River, Calexico, California (from the California Toxics Project), 1989, 13 7/8 x 17 3/4 in., gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Consolidated Natural Gas Foundation, Copyright 1989.