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ASB 2010 - Downstream the Colorado River: A Holistic Examination of the Colorado River's Contribution to Our Nation's Water and Energy

Basic Information
Application Process: 
ASB 2010
Trip Name: 
Downstream the Colorado River: A Holistic Examination of the Colorado River's Contribution to Our Nation's Water and Energy
Air Travel Trip: 
This trip will travel by air.
Number of Participants: 
12
Trip Description: 

The Colorado River powers the Southwest with energy from uranium, oil, natural gas, coal, and hydropower. It provides drinking water to communities all the way to southern California, and offers public recreation within the region's many national parks. Consequently, serious tradeoffs between energy, water, and ecosystem conservation exist along the Colorado River due to conflicting interests. We plan to investigate the impacts of the Colorado River’s energy and water contribution to the United States in order to better understand the region’s challenging issues and national significance.  The winter course will introduce students to the many environmental, social, and political obstacles along the Colorado River. Our discussions will encourage students to become active members of a dialogue that will culminate in a spring break trip to the Colorado River region. Potential visits to dams, mining sites, Native American communities, national parks, and with community leaders will expose students to different stakeholders and viewpoints, familiarize them with the great complexity of solving environmental problems, and empower them to become advocates of social change in their own communities and abroad.

Trip Leaders
Haley Smith Kingsland

Haley Kingsland is a native Bostonian who spent her childhood tidepooling, sailing, and collecting salamanders along the New England coast. Now in California, she's an Earth Systems co-term and an Intro to Earth Systems TA— but she majored in Comparative Literature and minored in Biology and Art History. Her co-term focuses on environmental communication, as she fervently believes in the power of words, images, and education to engage humanity in environmental conservation. She also firmly believes in the importance of immersive learning outside the classroom, and both the BOSP and ASB programs were an instrumental part of her Stanford experience. During a New Orleans ASB trip, she gained incredible firsthand exposure to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She and Tina were roommates on an energy-related BOSP seminar to the Arab Gulf, and traveled together again last spring on an ASB trip to Appalachia to study the impacts of the coal industry. Haley also joined a Sicilian archaeological dig one summer, and spent her entire junior year abroad in Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. This past summer she received a Haas Fellowship to work at a wildlife conservation center in Alaska. She’s a true interdisciplinarian who has taken full advantage of Stanford’s phenomenal opportunities, and is very excited to continue learning with you!

Tina Pham

Tina Pham is currently a co-term in Civil and Environmental Engineering and an Energy Resources TA. She is particularly interested in how water and energy are related. This summer, she worked for an environmental consultant to help water utilities streamline their operations to minimize their energy usage. Tina traveled to the Appalachian region on an energy-related alternative spring break and to Qatar on an overseas seminar, exposing her first hand to how energy affects people domestically and internationally. In Qatar, she visited the largest LNG plant in the world and witnessed how the Middle East is developing quickly from energy exports. In West Virginia and Kentucky, she saw how rural towns could be almost 100% dependent on coal revenues and how that affected the politics and policies of the region. From these experiences, she learned how important it is to study energy from both a technical and a policy point of a view. Because of this, she is very enthusiastic about leading this year's ASB with Haley. In her spare time, Tina may be found social dancing or eating large amounts of chocolate desserts.