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 Environmental History Conference Offers Some Clues. By Margaret Regan SMACK IN THE middle of Phoenix, hemmed in by the city's blacktop and fast-food joints, is a surprising riparian oasis. Called Tres R the confluence of the Salt River and two lesser-known rivers. "Wood ibises and bobcats have been sighted there," says Diana Hadley, an environmental historian at the Arizona State Museum. "It's like a jungle; it's just beautiful."
Presenters will have posters describing their watery enterprises set up in the theatre lobby from 4 to 6 p.m. Interested members of the public can buttonhole them for advice then and later on in the roundtable discussions, scheduled for 6 to 9:30 p.m. The audience will be asked to contribute questions. "We want it to be a truly interactive experience," says Hadley, "so the public can go up to a water expert and say, 'There's a little piece of arroyo in my neighborhood. How can we do something about it?' " The public session serves as the kickoff to a scholarly conference that will have some 300 historians and environmentalists converging upon Tucson to ponder topics from land policy in Tanzania to forest management in Four Corners. The American Society of Environmental History conference, titled Environmental History Across Boundaries, is coordinated by Douglas Weiner of the UA History Department. It offers panel discussions and an array of field trips, which will have the profs inspecting sewage in Nogales and mines near the Santa Ritas. (Hadley will deliver a scholarly paper on how people used the waters of the Santa Cruz between 1687 to 1912, tellingly titled "From Moderation to Excess.") Faculty can sign up for the full conference at the Holiday Inn City Center for $55; grad students for $35 and undergrads for $20. The Wednesday session is intended to raise public consciousness of one of the region's most pressing environmental problems and touchiest political controversies: water. "What we're trying to do is provide an idea of how attitudes shape legal systems, and the way people perceive and use our water systems," Hadley says. "We want to deepen and broaden our understanding of our use of water." There will be liquid breaks in the midst of the serious water talks. A reception overlapping the poster sessions takes place from 5 to 6 p.m. at the nearby Holiday Inn City Center, outside on the patio if the weather is good. From 7:30 to 8 p.m. there will be another reception, with a cash bar.
The Leo Rich Theatre is in the Tucson Convention Center complex,
at 260 S. Church Ave. The Holiday Inn City Center is at 181 W.
Broadway. For more information, visit the conference website at
http//w3.arizona.edu/~aseh99.
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Nothing, in fact, like Tucson's own parched and punished Santa
Cruz, the defunct waterway west of downtown that some local optimists
are trying to revive. But water-deprived Tucsonans have a chance
to learn how to pull off successful water projects like Tres Ríos
at a free public forum next Wednesday night at Leo Rich Theatre.
The evening-long session is dubbed Cultures of Water Use: Rivers,
Aquifers, Climate and Community in the Arid Borderlands; it
features a variety of speakers, from hydrologists and legal experts
to Native American leaders and authors.
