Deadbeat Dams: A Reading and Book Signing with Author Daniel Beard

Daniel P. Beard, the author of Deadbeat Dams, has been a forceful advocate for water policy reform for nearly four decades. A native of Bellingham, Washington, Dan received his undergraduate degree from Western Washington University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington. He currently serves on the American Forest Foundation Board of Trustees, and serves as the organization’s Treasurer. He has extensive experience working in the government and private sector. His previous positions include: Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives, Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, and Chief Operating Officer & Senior Vice President of the National Audubon Society, among others. Since retiring in 2010, he has visited more than 30 countries in Europe, North America and Asia. He and his wife Dana have been married 48 years have three grown children, a daughter-in-law, a son-in-law, as well as two grandchildren.

For more information about Daniel Beard and his book, please visit: http://www.deadbeatdams.com/

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About Daniel Beard’s book, Deadbeat Dams: Why We Should Abolish the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and Tear Down Glen Canyon Dam:

“Deadbeat Dams is a courageous book and much needed caveat published just when the dam builders are starting their latent cataclysmic assault on the rivers of the American West. As a former Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation appointed by President Clinton, Dan Beard’s voice and leadership are needed more than ever to protect and restore rivers, and to end the dam builder schemes to engineer America’s living rivers into concrete plumbing systems. Dams kill rivers – Deadbeat Dams restores rivers and our hope for a sustainable future” --Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Waterkeeper Alliance

“Unless you are a member of what Dan Beard so aptly calls the Water Nobility, the more you learn about Western water policy, the madder you’ll get. Deadbeat Dams makes it easy to learn enough not just to get mad, but start asking for change. It’s a smart and easy read that lays out the weird combination of inertia, politics, self-interest, and hypocrisy that has allowed Western water policy to waste billions of taxpayer dollars, squander water resources, and simply defy common sense for decades. Better yet, it gives a roadmap for fixing the problems!” --Ryan Alexander, President, Taxpayers for Common Sense

“When a former Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation calls for abolishing the agency and tearing down one of its most iconic dams, you realize this is not just another book about water in the West. With a passion seldom matched in nonfiction writing, Dan Beard uses his decades of experience at the Interior Department and on Capitol Hill to forge a withering critique of the dam-building era of American history. An advocate for the environment and for federal taxpayers, Beard calls for an independent commission to recommend which water projects get funding. His clear-eyed and firm-resolve message deserves careful consideration.” --Robert Glennon, author of Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What To Do About It.