Toxic-cleanup squads, bothies, alligator popsicles, & the personhood of rivers

I've been thinking about dystopias. Last week I finished reading Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale for the first time, and I was surprised at the role environmental degradation played. It's not the primary horror of the book, of course, but it is a world-defining force. "Pollution and toxic waste have so poisoned the populace that many men are steri…