Geoscience Education in the Mountain State:
CATS Environmental Earth Science Telecourse, Fall 1999,
Show 6 Transcript

CATS Telecourse
Environmental Earth Science
November 28, 1999

Dr. Bob: Greetings everyone! Here we are at the end of the semester and our final show for the series on "Environmental Earth Science" with Deb Hemler, I'm Bob Behling, as usual. We're here tonight to talk about a variety of things, including the work on "Cadillac Desert" that you've been doing. Hopefully you've had the time to look at the first two presentations and videos done by PBS. First, we're going to spend some time on announcements and cleaning up some things. So Deb, what are we all up to in this evening's show?

Dr. Deb: First announcement would be that the transcripts for this class will be posted by mid-day on Wednesday so they're going to hoof it and get those out so it will help you with your final if need be. The second announcement is that final exams will be posted by tomorrow evening. You should have received an e-mail stating that, that would be on the web site and not mailed to your facilitator. Look on the web site for that by tomorrow night sometime. If you have questions for the paper or the final exam, please direct them at your facilitator first. May be your facilitator can help you out, if not then defer to Tom, myself, or Dr. Bob. That way they can filter some of the more common questions out first and we get the harder ones. Check with your facilitator first before calling us.

Bob, we have a few questions about what's going to be on the final. Can you give us a view of that?

Dr. Bob: The final exam is going to be a series of multiple choice questions that I will cut and paste from my earth science course at the university. They may relate to your textbook, diagram, I may ask a different question then what the diagram information provides but it will be a number of multiple choice questions for a major portion. Then some short answer type questions. Quite obviously it becomes a matter of being able to grade these in some realistic time frame so I can get grades out to you. You've got a short time period at the end of the semester before the whole campus goes on break here. I'm trying to get things taken care of and put together so that you do get your grades in a timely fashion. Short answers will be just that. Sometimes a few words or a sentence or two. You can enhance of course, there's never any penalty for writing a longer discourse, but try to capture the essence of what you believe to be the answer. That pretty well matches it. You may want to add some sketches. You're always encouraged to put down cartoons of your own. There will be a major portion from the text, from our presentations, and then the final component will be the Cadillac Desert this evening.

Dr. Deb: A couple of announcements for the facilitators. One is, you may see this pink paper and there might be some questions about this. What this is is a contribution form from the participants. We asked that each of the participants fill this out at the site. If you attended any of the field trips then your contribution would have been food that you paid for while on this. If you drove any distance to that field trip, say over 20 miles, then you would put that mileage as your contribution to this grant. NSF looks favorably on matching funds and this goes then towards our matching funds. Also, if you drove any distance to get to the broadcasts that we did, put that mileage down. That's what this contribution form is for. Make sure that you fill that out and whatever contributions you made in the way of food, mileage, time, please put that on this form.

Dr. Bob: With respect to mileage, Deb, do they calculate it as the tax type rate of 30 cents per mile?

Dr. Deb: They just put the number of miles down. I think they just have a round trip mileage times the number of class meetings. They don't have to put down any type of cost or whatever.

Dr. Bob: These really are important. This is not just one of those extra exercises. NSF does want to know and it really helps us to demonstrate the total effort put into this.

Dr. Deb: If NSF funds a grant they really would like to know what the people at the grant site are doing to contribute to the grant as well. They don't want it to be one way. They want it to be a mutual funding source. This is a way of showing our in kind contribution to this grant.

Dr. Bob: If anybody was able to get a little money for mileage and that from their county, do they put that down in any event because the county has contributed?

Dr. Deb: Theoretically, if the county is then paid for, then you would need to put down that the county contributed that. Just put it down there as your contribution because somebody contributed the money or mileage to it, NSF didn't. Go ahead and just list that.

Dr. Bob: If anybody had a substitute when they came on the field trip, put that down.

Dr. Deb: Certainly! If the state department, regardless of whether the state department paid it or not, if a substitute was paid for your visit to the field trip then certainly put that down as a contribution as well.

Also to the facilitators, please remember to administer the post test at the end of the broadcast. You will have those bubble forms, a white, several page post test which is multiple choice. They fill in the top of the answer grid and then there's a questionnaire that they need to answer after that. Also, collect and mail any papers or quizzes to Tom. Please do that as soon as possible. We also strongly remind participants that they are responsible for mailing in their own final exam by the due date. This is not your facilitators obligation. This is your responsibility. Make sure that it's either postmarked by December 8^th or faxed on that day. Please call Tom about any changes needed to accommodate sites working on a tape delay. If the facilitator there has to adjust that due date please call Tom and let him know what that adjustment would be.

We also would like to review a little bit or give you a little teaser on the Spring 2000 semester class which is called the "Applied CATS Environmental Geology." It will be broadcast on Tuesdays from 4 to 6. The first broadcast will be on January 25^th. This is several weeks into the semester. We didn't want to broadcast the first week because we know it takes awhile to get everything under control, second week the Governor's on. We have the third week in the WVU semester.

Dr. Bob: It's our Y2K compliance slippage.

Dr. Deb: You may take the course for variable credit. This semester you had the option of taking it for 0 credit or for 3 credits. Next semester you have your option of taking it for 0 credit, 2 credits, or 3 credits. The difference is if you take it for 3 credits there's room for maybe 25 people to take it. It will be on a first come first serve basis. This class is a prerequisite for that Spring course. You have to be enrolled in this class in order to take it. Those 25 that enroll for the 3 credit course are going to be responsible for not only doing the 2 credit work but also you will be going on a field trip which is an extended field trip with Dr. Bob, myself, and Tom for anywhere from 3 to 5 days. Sometime in late May or early June, that's yet to be decided. There are several school days involved with this, so you would need to make arrangements to have a substitute for those days. You will also be responsible for reading and critiquing a book that would be related to environmental geology of some sort which would come from a reading list developed by Dr. Bob, myself, and Tom. The 2 credit course would be responsible for watching the 6 on air broadcasts and taking several quizzes and a final. The 3 credit would also do the book and the field trip but you would also have to watch all the on air broadcasts, including adjuncts as well as our on airs.

Preliminary course syllabus will be posted on the web site within the next week. For more information we'll have that out after January 1^st to the facilitators and will then be mailed out to the schools. Tom's final announcement is his apologies to those of you who received numerous copies of e-mails today. I know I received about 4 of each, so I know you probably did too. I did have some problems accessing the web, WVNET might have been having problems. It certainly wasn't Tom's fault, he wasn't hitting send, send, send.

Dr. Bob: One of the things that is also encompassed in the broad topic of earth science is the teacher's groups around the nation. The value on a regional basis, there are some fine meetings that are done in conjunction with other meetings or stand alone meetings, field trips are a big part of this. We thought we'd at least share some of that information of the NESTA.

Dr. Deb: The first teachers organization, this is a copy of the periodical put out by NESTA. The NESTA is a affiliated with the National Science Teachers Association. NESTA puts out this periodical called "The Earth Scientist." It comes out quarterly. I just got this one, it says Spring 1999. The membership is fairly reasonable. It's only $15 per year. Their annual meetings are in association with NSTA's regional and annual meetings. (Puts it on overhead for overview) I have a web site for them also posted on the overhead. You can obtain a membership form through their web site or I can mail you a membership form. $15 per year entitles you to this journal, "The Earth Scientist." It has some nice teaching ideas. This particular one has to do with digging for dinosaurs. The whole issue, the theme, is dinosaurs. They talk about Cope and Marsh, teacher articles, there's also an article on a nice web site. There are lots of teaching ideas. The Earth Scientists is geared towards teachers and use of earth science in the classroom. If you've ever been to a National Science Teachers Conference they are the probably the people that first coined the Shar-a-thon for which RockCamp does often. It's not a bad periodical if you want to get some earth science teaching ideas.

Dr. Bob: There's some nice questions and hypothesize what you saw when we were up digging up dinosaurs with a group in Marion County this past county, we did some of the same types of things. What is the rock you're in, what might it be?

Dr. Deb: This fellow has a real nice activity where he constructed a sandbox in the back of his room and has replicas. Over the years he has gotten dinosaur bone replicas that he buries and they have to excavate with brushes and map out in sectors what they find.

Dr. Bob: The quality, I might add, of the replicas is really outstanding. They have all the details, it's just really great stuff. Then there's an NAGT.

Dr. Deb: The second earth science teachers association is NAGT which I won't kid you tends to gear itself towards college professors. Because of some wild voices they are starting to pay more attention to K-12 teachers. We're trying to get more and more publications in K-12. This is the Journal of Geoscience Education. While most articles in it would gear itself towards a geology professor there is one particular column in there that is preservice teacher oriented which would apply to the classroom. There are a few articles from time to time on K-12. This one is more pricey, it's $35 per year. Whether that will benefit you as much as the $15 a year in the earth science, which is totally geared towards K-12, you'll have to make that decision.

Dr. Bob: I'm the representative of the NAGT here in West Virginia, as a state representative, I agree too. We keep urging and pushing towards getting more value for the K-12.

Dr. Deb: They have a web site and they have links to many other nice sites. You might want to check it out anyway.

Dr. Bob: They update constantly.

Dr. Deb: Our efforts to get this more K-12 oriented will be the fact that we're going to be hosting the eastern section of the NAGT's annual meeting here, this spring in Canaan Valley from May 18^th through 20^th. Those of you who are CATS leaders will recognize that date also as the date that you will be in Canaan for a spring CATS meeting. We'll be there at the same time, hopeful we'll overlap some ventures. Our focus for this eastern section annual meeting will be to get K-12 teachers out into the field. We have a series of field trips which will run on Saturday. On Friday we'll have sessions that will be presented by K-12 teachers from all over the eastern part of the United States and your own peers from West Virginia. There will be some college professors doing some presentations there. There's one particular fellow that teaches college and does an excellent job of earthquakes and I have taken some of what he has done in the college classroom into the high school. I can't take it as far as he did but certainly are a lot of things you can pick up from a college level earth science class, geology class.

Dr. Bob: One of the other things that is of great value, I found of great value, is the holistic type of bringing earth science into working with the students and having the readings and books and sometimes just reading to students is of great value, excerpts, to get that tease to go on. Further, in reading Cadillac desert and seeing the video's, I would urge if you have specific interest in one river or other river's that what is of great value is to go back to fiction or diaries, journals, and so forth of what it was like when Europeans first visited this area. What it was like before the change. We'll talk later about the Hachachee (sp) Canyon, the Colorado, the Missouri. What was the river like? What we see today and what we attempt to show today is nothing like it at all. What are some of the books you recommend?

Dr. Deb: One I mentioned before on one of the exploratories in Parkersburg was A Civil Action which they just made a movie out of and has John Travolta of all people. He's actually fairly well cast as this particular lawyer. A Civil Action is the story of a small town outside of Boston who experiences some ground water contamination. The end result is numerous kids in that community in Woburn suffer from leukemia. This is a compelling story of one lawyers fight to get the families compensation from the industries that pollute and Beatrice Foods is one of those companies. It's a frustrating book but it is also very factual. The author, Jonathan Har that wrote this followed these lawyers throughout this process and so it's a very good compilation of accounts, stories, what happened throughout this. This whole ground water contamination, there's a lot of geology that's mentioned, also the problems that come into drilling wells in an aquifer near an area that's been heavily polluted. I highly recommend this book. If you're trying to get students to read environmentally oriented, especially environmental geology oriented issues.

Dr. Bob: Is that more for senior high?

Dr. Deb: Yes, it's definitely, it's not sexually explicit anywhere so it's safe if you're trying to avoid those which is sometimes hard to find in a lot of the modern literature. Many people probably thought when this first came out that it was fiction, but it's not, it's nonfiction. It did win the National Book Critiques Circle Award for nonfiction.

Dr. Bob: Since we mentioned that the aspect of explicit type material but one book you might find interesting, probably would not be appropriate even for senior high, it's more of a college level, rather explicit language and content. It's titled the Monkey Wrench Gang. It's at time hilarious and at other times you wonder what is going on. It is totally fiction although in the heart of the author and the author of this one is Edward Abby who has written some fine, fine pieces. If you ever have a chance pick up Desert Solitaire. It is not an exceptionally long book, it's by the same author, it's nonfiction. It's his observations at a time when he spent time in Utah in the American Southwest as a ranger, specifically working at Arches Monument. He wrote about a dam that is remarkably similar to Glen Canyon Dam. It is an interesting, interesting book. It is unfortunately not for your students. However, if you did want something with respect to the Colorado River that would be very interesting. A book by Wallace Stegner, Beyond the 100^th Meridian. It focuses on John Wesley Powell and his trip down the Grand Canyon or the Colorado River and also it goes far beyond. It's a biography really of John Wesley Powell. A fascinating look at the old American West. There are others by Stegner on nature that are really excellent and this will help lead you to them.

Another interesting book, an author that you probably will recognize, John McFee, who was prolific in his writings with respect to nature and geology specifically. Interesting title, Encounters with the Arch Druid. It's not a very expensive book about $11 for this in paperback. The Druids are defined by one of the people as a religious figures who sacrificed people and worshiped trees is the way he self defines it. The point is there are four stories in this. One of them has to do with the Colorado River and you'll recognize these names. John McFee goes on a raft trip with Floyd Dominee and David Brower of the Sierra Club. All McFee does is report on the interaction between the two. It's not exceptionally long. It leaves the reader to make up their mind. Some will fall on the way of development other's might fall on the side of environmentalists. This is an excellent book for senior high.

Dr. Deb: The Monkey Wrench Gang people would be Arch Druids. They get their start in crime by cutting down billboards.

Dr. Bob: If you caught the show The Missouri River segment on the History channel, I thought an excellent program, really well done, and very timely. They had captured footage over this past spring and wove it together in a marvelous presentation in a relatively short period of time. Undaunted Courage, Steven E. Ambrose, who you'll also recognize from World War II writings. It's a large book but it goes along the journey of Lewis and Clark, uses their journal and then embellishes upon it. It's a marvelous, marvelous read. What I like to do is take the more modern literature pieces and go back to some earlier ones. Across the Wide Missouri done sometime in the 30s but it is just an outstanding history of the Rocky Mountain fur trade. It reflects on what that land was like. What we have done to the Missouri River in about 65 years and the valley is unbelievable. We have gone through a procedure where lakes are viewed as better then rivers. The Missouri River doesn't exist that the trappers had seen.

As a matter of fact, this is nice linkage, Undaunted Courage, because it was the stories that Lewis and Clark brought back that caused about 25 years later this tremendous surge into this pristine area, Louisiana Purchase. The trappers flooded out there after reading excepts of what Lewis and Clark had to offer. There was a time for twenty four hours had to just stay in one place because buffalo were fording the river and it was just a continuous head to tail of buffalo about, I don't know, a hundred yards wide and they just sat there while the buffalo went across. It was unbelievable. The fur traders and others followed in then in the 1830s. It was their entry in that triggered monumental changes in the way we look at the Missouri River. I had read this a long long time ago before I ever became a geologist and I loved. You really get into your imagination and be with the fur traders at that time.

This is just a small sampling of the type of books. We also urge you in Cadillac Desert to look to the back of each chapter, there is a marvelous bibliography. If one chapter or another specifically interests you, grab a hold of it and move with it. Which brings us to the next item on the outline. How would you suggest using Cadillac Desert in the classroom?

Dr. Deb: There are several options you have. You can either choose to use the book and some chapters are better then others. You don't have to use the entire book but that is a little pricey to get into the classroom. You could either have the librarian get a couple of copies and then either read sections of it aloud or assign chapters especially the one going down the Colorado with Powell. That is a nice synopsis, Powell's trip down the Colorado, which would be interesting to students.

Dr. Bob: The third episode is from the book.

Dr. Deb: The third episode in the video series is also on John Wesley Powell's trip down the Colorado. That is a fascinating video. The videos can be used as an exploration or a jumping off point to several research topics for students to kind of wet their appetite. They could do research on any one of the western dams. You could have them express in what particular western water aspect they would like to research. You could use it as an exploration. You could also use it as a concept development. You could do some exploration to peak their interest and then use that to develop the content or talking about the western water issues. Especially on the one about getting water to California. I would not recommend showing that video in its entirety in one sitting. Having just observed two high school students sit there and watch it with me they got extremely bored after about twenty minutes. That's all a high school class can pretty much stand is 15 to 20 minutes of a video, after that they're gone. I would highly recommend chopping these up if you do choose to show one. Chop them up into small segments. Have questions that you would like them to focus on. Just plopping a movie into the VCR at the beginning of the class and expecting your students to come away with any type of content is not going to happen unless you direct that learning. Ask a couple of key questions. It doesn't have to be a lot, but maybe three or four questions. Put them on the board or on a sheet in front of them so as they are watching the video they're focusing on particular content that you want them to, they're looking for or trying to derive an answer. Don't make it simply a fill in the blank but a more thought provoking question. Something that they would have to use the information from the video and say apply it to a more in depth topic.

Dr. Bob: We don't necessarily have to apply it back to West Virginia. For example, I find that the description of the Teton Dam disaster, it's just a few number of pages in the book but it's excellent, it's narrative. To use that, those few pages to be read and then use it as a jumping off place. What would you do if you are this person or another person? What would you do and what is the way in which you can minimize the problem as this wall of water is moving fifteen miles an hour down the valley.

Dr. Deb: Or they could look at the construction of an earthen dam. What should be there? Take a look at the construction of earthen dams that may have occurred in Pennsylvania or West Virginia. It could be something, you could bring it home. There are numerous things that you could do with this video series.

Dr. Bob: Even some events in West Virginia that happened and occurred a long time before your students were born but you can still go back and try to get some of that information. Again, excerpts, the building of the Boulder Dam is an excellent one to lift out from the series. There is a longer one, I believe it was under modern marvels so it was an hour long presentation from the History Channel. They went into much, much more detail but it was amazing. It was an excellent presentation on the building of that. At a point in time there were about 4 or 5 of the largest structures ever on earth were all being done at the same time in the 1930s and they were all being done in a small area of the world in the western United States. To try to place that in context is an excellent use of Cadillac Desert.

Dr. Deb: I just saw the broadcast of China Town, again. Over the holiday and I happened to catch it again. Once you've watched Cadillac Desert, even if you've seen China Town before, watch it again. You will be amazed at how much more you pick up. I had seen China Town years ago and just never bothered to rewatch it. Now having become more familiar with the situation in California and exactly what's going with Cadillac Desert and getting water to LA. That author really drug in some pretty important issues that parallel what you see in Cadillac Desert. It's kind of interesting. A lot of it's fiction and hogwash.

Dr. Bob: It's not for the students especially near the end when you find out all the goings on. It is not something...it's very good.

Well, we're talking then about books, videos. What about the web site? There are some things going on now and the web site has become a marvelous resource. There's some things going on in California that we'd like to call your attention to.

Dr. Deb: One of the jumping off points from Cadillac Desert, in the first video I believe or the second video, was they mentioned the Hachachee (sp) Dam and that was the reservoir that provides water for San Francisco, that was north of LA and it really didn't play into the video much in terms in getting LA's water however there is a whole other situation in San Francisco which shouldn't be ignored. As an offshoot of watching the video you can send your students out to investigate the Hachachee Dam. We have the web site on the computer.

Dr. Bob: I'll also point out that Hachachee itself is not in the index of Cadillac Desert. I looked that up just to make sure. These are some things that you are going to do as an expansion. This is an excellent opportunity to bring in John Muir and perhaps some of his writings. Excellent writer and many times we serve as a bridge to the past because we've read some of these things. The youngsters coming through if they don't get them from us they may not stumble onto these other authors who have done so much more a longer time ago then we have been alive.

Let's go to the computer and the future of the Hachachee. This picture of where the reservoir is and what it would look like with a cathedral photo. What I've found to be real interesting, this dam was built about 1914 or so, look at this. Could not this be done in West Virginia? Think about a reservoir in West Virginia and what it would look like in a time lapse sequence once it's drained, what does it look like? This is after a few years, immediately after it was drained, the railroad tracks that were there and all of the other aspects. Ten years after the dam. Think about the ecology. How long does it take for a tree to grow? The brush, the shrubs? The same type of situation can be done with say the 1985 flood. If you have a river or stream that's flooded out near you use that same concept. The 85 flood swept out a lot of brush, a lot of snags, it also took away all the underbrush and the undercover. It opened up the stream so that the stream water is higher temperature now because it swept away the shade. Go back then and have the students think about this. The 1985 event is quite some time ago already. They could do marvelous things right here in West Virginia. There's what 10 years might look like, 20 years as the trees are getting bigger and so forth on to what it would be in a hundred years. There are some, especially in the senior high school, who are excellent artists and they might just really get into this and be very, very excited. If you want to put together a little show some others might be interested and use it. Have them choose music to go with some sort of a multimedia event to show parents on a night when they come in to see what's going on.

Dr. Deb: Get the students that aren't ordinarily that interested in science using their talents and gifts to incorporate that into a science lesson.

Dr. Bob: I'd also point out that this snag business and floods, we're going to talk later about the Missouri River. The Corps of Engineers was out trying to clean the river of snags in the 1800s because the river boats sank. The river boats burned all the cottonwood. They needed cords and cords of cottonwood every day. Now there are no cottonwood trees left. The ecology is totally different. Have them stretch their imagination would seen to be a marvelous opportunity. Write stories about it, like a Michener story. Take them someplace and say, carry this from geologic beginnings to where we are now and what even the future might look like.

Dr. Deb: Bringing that back to West Virginia, actually there are a couple of things. One we have seen in the video about the Glen Canyon Dam and how that really inundated several Anasazi ruins and the Hachachee, if you get into the web site and look around you'll see that the Hachachee valley was as beautiful as Yosemite and John Muir actually liked it better then Yosemite. He thought it was a beautiful valley. As the students look at these then they can start thinking our impoundments and what have we lost in the numerous impoundments that we've had in West Virginia. I can tell you that several of our lakes have Native American petroglyphs at the base of those lakes.

Dr. Bob: It's not only the lakes, it's the interstates too. Right outside of Morgantown, I-79, wiped out an area that had petroglyphs. It can be all types of these things to get them thinking about that. Then there's a dam going up, Three Gorges Dam in China, that will be the largest in the world. It is an absolutely incredible activity. We pulled up the web site on this one also. Just do the search on Three Gorges Dam. This happened to be pulled out of the web site, ecologyabout.com, a search engine on Three Gorges. 600 feet high. The largest hydroelectric dam in the world on the Yangtze River. It is done primarily for hydroelectricity and flood control. In recent times the flood control has been a tremendous problem. The last two years alone. It's going to flood a huge portion, 410 mile reservoir. The cost in unbelievable, somewhere between 18 to 30 billion dollars over 20 years. Then they'll talk about the proponents and opponents. You could have a mock debate in the classroom to gather research about an area and then compare and contrast.

Dr. Deb: The hydroelectric dam going in at Summersville.

Dr. Bob: On our field trip, those that were at Parkersburg missed our field trip in the south but we went to the Summersville Dam where they're putting in a hydroelectric plant. Modest sums of money, modest generation of power. We're not talking about lighting all of West Virginia.

Dr. Deb: 80,000 homes.

Dr. Bob: But we're talking about 22 million dollars for the hydroelectric plant to retrofit Summersville Dam and another 33 million to do the legal work, buy the right of way for 11 miles of connecting line to get into the eastern U.S. grid. That's a staggering...the whole power plant for 22 mil and then 11 miles of line and all the things going on that. There are other Three Gorges Dam sites and pictures and scenes.

The point is, that this web site and the topic itself is great. Another that we wanted to bring up to you, shared with us by Kathy Garner from East Fairmont High School. It's the gray water issue. What's the difference from gray water and black water? Gray water is water from dishes or the bath, it doesn't have much nitrogen in it. Of course, the expectation is that it would not have feces or urine in it as black water would. Black water being from the flushed toilet systems. If you live in areas such as Denver, for years people have had gray water systems where you treat because it's easy to treat water that has come through early. They gather this from washing machines, dishes, from the bath, they put it through a filter and then through a soil box and then you can disburse it. You could use it for grass irrigation. In Denver they often get into water issues early in spring when you're trying to grow grass or your plants or whatever. The point is that Denver sits in the valley of the North Platte, the North Platte is tributary to the Missouri River. Some great stories that Denver would use up all the water and put in other requirements and use water from other reservoirs and tributaries. Downstream along the Platte had been a great ground for the whooping crane but by taking the water away it did not allow in the spring time for the flooding of the flood plain area. When the flood plain area flooded then there was a huge explosion in the number of gastropods and other good tasty critters for whooping cranes to chow down on during breeding season. That wetland area was eliminated and that created the crisis for the whooping crane. The web of these, you pull one thread and the whole fabric shudders. It's a great lead in. This gray water is what people in Denver are doing to attempt to cut back on the overall water needs.

We've gone through a variety of things in this first 45 minutes, we'll take a break now and come back to some specific rivers and talk about things that came out of Cadillac Desert, out of the tv program, and also out of the save the Missouri program if you didn't catch it. Take a break, stay tuned, we'll be back in a few minutes.

There's so much already taken care of in Cadillac Desert then I'll really spend some time on the Missouri River because it's very interesting story with respect to the battle between two major players and government agencies. The TVA and the Tentom, the Tennessee and Tombigbee River and then just the comments at the end for eastern rivers as east of the hundredth meridian. Recall that in times when we talk about this in the one book that I introduced earlier I talked to the issue of the hundredth meridian. It is approximately the line of the Mississippi River. East of the hundredth meridian we usually think of as being a wet, humid type of temperature climate environment in which rainfall exceeds evaporation and transporation. West of the hundredth meridian, as a generalization, evaporation and loss of water exceeds precipitation. As America grew by purchasing and take over and expansion to the west it became quite obvious that water issues in the east, although addressed earlier then the water issues in the west. It became quite clear that there were going to be dramatically different thinking and people who moved from the east to solve the problems in the west were going to bring with them thoughts of great abundance of water into a land where it was looked to be a land that was inhospitable, was never going to be used for anything and therefore was a target for some grandiose plans.

Comments that I'd like to make about the Colorado River and the issues to capsulize what you've seen on the videos and read in the book Cadillac Desert. I think that going back to talk about the first journey down the Colorado River with John Wesley Powell and his trips down the Colorado River is an excellent adventure story. To see some of the actual craft that not only was utilized in those early years for the river rafting but then for the adventurous river rafting in historic context. The small wooden boats that just seemed to lack all safety devices whatsoever. There's a museum at the Grand Canyon demonstrating this. Then to look up the history that steamboats were coming up the Colorado River as far as possible to bring tourists. Sometimes our students think that in the 1800s not much happened. After all we didn't have automobiles. If you didn't have automobiles you couldn't go anywhere. People kind of stayed at home and did nothing. That is not the case as we enter yet another millennium it is very valuable to go back into compare and contrast that the 1800s was an incredibly active time for the expansion of the United States. Things were set in place, events were bound to happen by what was happening in the 1800s. When we get to the Missouri River and talk again about the Louisiana Purchase we'll emphasize this even more. Look at the Colorado River as a very large drainage basin. As a drainage basin that interacts on International boundaries because when the Colorado River water was allocated there was no allocation to Native Americans and there was very little thought to the Mexican government and the peoples of Mexico. Further, when the allocation of the water from the Colorado River was made it was based on data that subsequently we found that the precipitation data that was used from the 1930s and 20s was some of the wettest times in over a century. We found out that information when the tree ring dendrology laboratory in Arizona completed more and more work. Got more and more baseline data. This data was not available when the water was allocated and the western states were clamoring for decisions on getting that water and getting as much of it as possible. For example, that particular issue, California wanted the first big dam built much closer to California so that they could cut down on the cost of building their transportation system to get that water into California. So the first site was not the geological site that was chosen first by the Corps of Engineers was not actually not the first site for the Hoover Dam but rather that site was much closer to California. Getting back to the dendrology, looking at that tree ring analysis it became quite clear later on that the allocations of water are such that the water was just totally used up in drier periods that we are now in. Further there were some states that made decisions not to withdraw any water. Arizona is the excellent example. The spinoff of the creation of the drainage management of the Colorado River was to create the central Arizona project or CAP. Look that up specifically in your index in the Cadillac Desert book. Look it up under the web site that the central Arizona takes water from the Colorado River and delivers it to Phoenix and Tucson. I suggest to you that Phoenix and Tucson aren't any where real close to the Colorado River. As a matter of fact, Phoenix was also the beneficiary of the hydroelectric power generated as a creation of Hoover Dam so that Arizona has always been a major player in the value added to the changes in the Colorado River. Look to the characterization of what happens at the southern end of the Colorado River including what happens in the salt and sea in California. Irrigation has always been ballyhooed as a major component of saving this water. Even though, evaporation will cause the loss of tremendous volumes of that hard warm water. Expensive water, but it was still irrigation was needed and therefore they were going to divert that water and irrigate. Our history of irrigation in the western United States is a history of tremendous usage. Over irrigation. Remember then that the soils that had formed were soils that were forming were evaporation was the dominant process. After the rainfall had gone into the ground and there was a water table, there's evaporation from the water table towards the warmer surface at the surface. Water will migrate as films along the grains in the interconnected permeability below the surface. There's also a dissolved load in that ground water. It's calcium carbonate and other ions are present, some magnesium, but predominately calcium carbonate. That calcium carbonate starts to move toward the surface in the thin film of water and as the water evaporates calcium carbonate precipitates out. It can cement the grains together, weakly or perhaps a bit more firmly and it's called colleachate (sp). That collechate can also create the salt pans in the areas where the water table does sometimes come to the surface. Those old B-movie westerns that you saw where they had to keep the cattle away from the water because it may be so laced with dissolved solids that the cattle will die from drinking that water because it is too alkaline. The alkaline flats in the western United States. The salt and sea is an excellent example for two reasons, one, it is an example of an alkaline flat area when it's dry but over irrigation throughout the years has created an elevated water table so that the water's moving down into the basin where the salt and sea exists and the water level is rising. There are some of the hotels and resorts in the salt and sea area where their piers are literally drowning at times because we have over irrigated. Also, it turned out to the country of Mexico, water that if it was running into Mexico where the Colorado should end in the bay between the Baja Peninsula and the mainland Mexico that on that delta very little water was actually entering Mexico. When it did it was also highly saline. The United States had to build a number of desalination plants so that the Mexican border, the water passing over into Mexico could be used. There were times when pumps were shot out across the international boundary because on the American side too much water is being used, on a variety of rivers along that long boundary between Mexico and the United States. The Colorado River is a very long river, rich in history. It has that linkage to John Wesley Powell and the days of adventurism and exploration as well as Native American topics and Native American studies and the hydroelectric plants and it also relates to the one final major push. There was a dam, there were many dams proposed for the Colorado River, but one dam was to be at the southern of the Grand Canyon National Park. That dam was not eventually built because opponents to that dam suggested that people would see this large reservoir backed up into the Grand Canyon National Park and the reality, of course, geologically several millions of years ago there was a volcanic eruption and you will not see that volcanic cone from the park itself. You have to go on some 30 or 40 miles of pretty rough back trails to get there and to American Indian land. It's called Vulcan's Throne. It is a relatively smallish volcanic cone. It reflects the fact that that area was a site of volcanism that is quite substantial. If you go to Flagstaff you'll see this huge peak of black rock right to the north of the city of Flagstaff. Flagstaff is built along the flanks of San Francisco peaks. Those are volcanoes. Just to the north you can go to Wopachi National Monument and some of these other national monuments just north of Flagstaff where there are small little cones, ash and cinder cones, as well as lava. Vulcan's Throne was part of this volcanic activity and it actually dammed up the Colorado River. It created a dam such that there was a huge reservoir of water, naturally created, backing up behind the lava but as the dam created the reservoir, the reservoir filled and there was no release gate. The water did not go through the dam structure itself, that being lava, but it started to spill over the top probably after a few years of filling and that water continued to cut down. Of course, we all know now that there is no natural dam across the Colorado River but if you raft the Colorado River you'll see the black rock on either side at Vulcan's Throne. If you hike down the trails within the National Park, either North Rim or South Rim, if you are taught to look for what type of materials you're after you'll find lake sediments and gravel and boulders up in some of these secured areas, protected areas, on the slopes well above the current valley floor. The Colorado River has had a fascinating history. The tours are available, video tapes, in addition to the Cadillac Desert series on PBS and it's a marvelous story to incorporate into the classroom.

Let's change to another major river system, the Missouri River system. The Missouri River heads by name at Three Forks, Montana. It drains in a massive area and then joins the Mississippi River, not too many miles north of downtown St. Louis. (Goes to overhead) Let me first point out that the area covered by the Missouri River system is incredible. It represents just over 17 percent of all the land area of the lower 48 states. That is a substantial amount for one river system. This territory was purchased from France. Thomas Jefferson went about doing that purchased from France in the Louisiana Purchase. Another great story to bring to your class, if you link it with history and other activities. Jefferson decided that this river needed to be explored so he took his own private secretary, who had a great deal of adventuring experience as well as army experience and that was Col. Merriwether Lewis and the co commander that Lewis chose was William Clark, an old friend of his. Together Lewis was only 29 years old when this exploration was to begin in 1804. He was to do the science and to keep the journal and to gather all the natural history information. William Clark was to work with the men. To get the job done. He planned the logistics and do that. They gathered together 45 additional men. They were out for over two years. I'm expanding upon this because we will as these things creep up on us, you may want to choose this because in the year 2004 I can guarantee there's going to be a big play about the bicentennial anniversary of Lewis & Clark. If you want to put together some of that information ahead of time and be prepared for that in a coordinating linking system by the time they are freshmen they may have had some bits and pieces by the time we actually observe the bicentennial. The bottom line is this...a huge area of the United States was added to the purchase. The men in the Lewis and Clark expedition went on a total travel of over 8,000 miles. It took over two years. They traveled all the way to the headwaters of the Missouri and then they crossed over and went down to the Pacific Ocean and then came back and over and came back to St. Louis. The information that they shared, they found over a hundred new species of animals and plants species. Lewis was very knowledgeable and gathered together this information as well as the ethnological information on all the American Indian tribes that they came in contact with. The Missouri is named after the Missouri Indians that occupied a portion of that river bank at that time. What they had to face was a wild river. There were snags, it was very shallow. The old saying in the 1930s and earlier in this century was that the Missouri River was an interesting river but it was too think to drink and too thin to plow. The river was not really a resource unless dams were put up. After Lewis and Clark came back in 1806, this information was disseminated it was very clear that there was going to be movement into the area. Several types of individuals, first of all the trappers. It was a rich virgin area. Beaver hats being important of the day that huge numbers of beaver were going to be taken out of the Rocky Mountains. That's why you might want to have your class read "Across the Wide Missouri" to find out about rendevous. Gather what this was like in 1830s and 1840s. The trappers, by 1820s, less then 20 years after this first journey, there were tremendous number of trappers going out into this area and they said we want our furs to get back faster so steamboats started on the Missouri River. They come up from St. Louis so they could get those furs sold. They could get back out and gather more furs rather then taking a long, long trek to get back to St. Louis on their own. The steam boats were driven by the cottonwoods that had to be cut in order to get the steamboats up and down the river. One in seven steam boats was sinking because of the snags in the river. The steamboat operators went to Congress and said, "Look, if you want this economic development, we've got to pull these snags out of the river." The Army Corps of Engineers predecessors were pulling snags out of the Missouri by the 1830s and the 1840s. The cottonwood trees which lined the banks which afforded shade for Lewis and Clark's expedition, which afforded protection for animals and therefore there were great hunting grounds for deer and other animals along the river banks. Those cottonwood trees were being cut down. The cottonwood groves were not given an opportunity to re establish themselves in the 1900s because very shortly after these were great grazing lands on Bureau of Land Managements land. This was a start of the change of the ecologic system. In 1933, FDR issued a permit to go out and build the Fort Peck Dam in Montana up near the head waters of the Missouri River. That dam was a great opportunity. In 1933 what did FDR look at? He looked at the issue, we were in the depression, we needed jobs. This was a massive earth filled dam. Of it's dam it was the largest dam every proposed of an earth filled type. It put 10,000 men to work. That spin off of that 10,000 men working on that dam created a great deal of economic development for the area. FDR pretty much had a blank check because of the national recovery act. He could issue permits to go out and do things that need to be done. In part, this whole episode of building of dams started in the late 1930s before World War II. Throughout the American west on the Columbia River, the Colorado River, and on the Missouri River. On the Columbia River the building of Boulder Dam. The building of Bonneville Dam on the Colorado River. The Boulder or Hoover Dam and then Fort Peck Dam on the Missouri River were formed massive, massive structures that dwarfed anything that human endeavor had done to that time. Dwarfed the pyramids, all the other structures, the Empire State Building in the amount of concrete used and the total volume of the structure and the materials used. So then in the 1930s then, the first dam was put on the Missouri River at Fort Peck. The problems arose as World War II began. In 1943 there was a tremendous year of flooding and it was discovered that Fort Peck Dam had been built too far upstream to collect enough water to prevent the flooding. As a result there was a massive rapid move to have other dams on the Missouri River. Now stepping back a few years from that, the plans the work on this, you have to understand two agencies of the Federal Government are involved. One, is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They have been players on working on rivers since their inception. Two, the Bureau of Reclamation. The Bureau of Reclamation has a different viewpoint of things. One of these two groups, and I'll let you work this out, looks at the dry cycle. They are looking specifically for irrigation. They are thinking, what happens when you try to develop this area, we need water for irrigation. Therefore we are looking at the drier cycle and we will plan dams and structures in order to capture this water in a stair step. It will not be a river again. It will be a series of stair steps on down to the last dam along the South Dakota, Nebraska border or further south if we can get more of them in before the Missouri River joins the Mississippi River. We will use this water for irrigation. It will open up vast new areas for agriculture and while we're at it we'll put in hydroelectric generators. That way it will help justify our grandiose plans for the irrigation and hydroelectric power. The other federal agency is looking at how do we prevent the floods? The 1943 floods have been a disaster. It has slowed down the war effort. Therefore, we need to get these flood control efforts in and create catchment basins so that when snow melts rapidly we can capture this water and then let it bleed off more slowly and we won't have downstream flooding. But, we'll also embrace aspects of hydroelectric power because that's good business. We can use that power. We found in viewing and listening to Floyd Dominee (sp) that it's free power. It is renewable resource. It doesn't pollute.

In the overall construction of the hydroelectric and the rush to build hydroelectric plants the one thing that was not thoroughly incorporated is what happens to the ecosystem? Another river system that I mentioned a few moments ago, the Columbia River system. That river system empties directly into the ocean so that there was a specific species, the salmon, that was using that river for breeding purposes. It was required for breeding purposes. The building of dams and hydroelectric projects on the Columbia nearly wiped out the salmon. You know part of that story, we built salmon ladders so that the salmon, a pretty vigorous lot coming back to breed, could work their way up and jump their way up to bypass the dams t hat we had built on the river. It was a very, very close situation to wiping out the salmon on the Columbia. On the Missouri River system we find that the Fort Peck Dam was not enough and that after World War II a series of other earthen dams, so that there are five or six major earthen dams. During the 1940s as a result of the...actually there was more than one flood. The first was in May when the snow pack melted very, very rapidly. Then the other floods followed in close proximity a few months behind after very heavy rainfall when the ground was already saturation. It just reactivated the flood conditions. The Missouri River was a target. Two agencies were going to present their plans, Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation. In 1943, a massive report came out but the report was modest by Corps standards. The Corps can put together massive documents. This report came out over 50 years ago and the Corps is now redoing a report on the Missouri River. It is looking at new things. It is looking at the floods in the upper Missouri of 1993 and saying not only the Missouri but the upper Mississippi, maybe what we have done over the past 50 years is not the best way. Even the Corps, which of often looked upon as being very set in it's ways but the Corps of Engineers has come about to some new thinking. The building of levee's for example, anywhere along these flood plains if you build levees to prevent the flooding, which is the Corps is the one that interested in preventing that flood damage (Hint to what I suggested earlier that the one agency was interested in the high water level) but the levees simply catch the water behind the levees and then you have big large lakes. When the river goes back down to normal levels the water cannot get through the levee , the ground is saturated so that the permeability is very, very much diminished. It will takes months for that water to drain in these prime agricultural areas that were presumably protected by the levees. In fact that whole growing season they well have been lost because the levees were there. There was no way to get the water back out into the channel when the flood subsided.

The construction on the Missouri, the Pick-Sloan Plan. Two individuals, one from the Corps, one from the Bureau of Reclamation. They had two plans. At first they didn't incorporate all the states that the Missouri was flowing in. That didn't make much sense and it raised a lot of hackles. Then there were groups that were for the Corps of Engineers plan. They were for the Bureau of Reclamation, the Sloan Plan. There were other who were for neither of the plans and proposed their own. The newspapers of the day became deeply involved in this. Primarily it was the Dakota's and Montana but it covers many states and parts of two provinces of Canada. The ultimate result was what became to be known as the Pick-Sloan Plan. If you scratch the surface you'll find that the Pick-Sloan Plan was nothing more than the Pick Plan and the Sloan Plan together. They had proposed an incredible number of power plants, 17 power plants and 90 reservoirs. The plan wouldn't have been finished until well into the year 2000. Fortunately in some respects it never has come about. As a matter of fact, in the adjacent 48 it is within the realm of possibility that in our lifetimes we will never see another really massive dam project constructed. I think it's highly unlikely that any project will ever gain a foothold. I don't know what the circumstance could possibly be. So the Pick-Sloan Plan, the Missouri River is the most controlled river in the world. From it's head all the way down into it's junction with the Mississippi River. It includes that area of the Platte River and Denver. There's these conflicting uses and people who want to keep their own water in the system. I'd also point out to you that as recently as June 7^th, 1999, there was in the USA Today a major topic, Mending the Big Muddy. It was on the front page and therefore incorporated material on the back page. I call your attention to it again because there was a marvelous inner page in full color that talks historically about Lewis and Clark. Talked about the ecosystem and it talked about the different animals. There's a very interesting the Pallid sturgeon. Sturgeons have been around for millions of years. They are very primitive type fish but they were almost wiped out because they need the shallow water. Of course what did navigation need but deeper water. They needed the water to be concentrated in the Missouri in a channel not on the flood plain. We went about a fish hatchery in Three Forks, Montana to recreate and try to reestablish the Pallid sturgeon in the water. It's one of the animal types in the ecological system. What is happening now, the Missouri today is a very interesting possibility. A deep fast moving channel for what barge traffic there is. In reality there is very little barge traffic especially to the north. There's a great deal of recreational travel but the recreational does not need a deep draft channel with rapidly flowing water. The old dry side channels unfortunately are that, dry. They're used for agriculture but it is within the realm of possibility that some of this is going to be reconstructed along the Missouri so that there will be one main channel but it's shallower, slower moving. Water will be behind on side channels, not always flowing but when the water is high in the spring. What happens naturally to a river system is that the floods usually come in the spring and that brings with it the additional nutrients onto the side flood plain areas and this triggers animals, especially early in the breeding season. When it's warm and hot during the summer these may dry up. The breeding season, hopefully, has been a success enough to be establishing and reestablishing the life forms. The plan also is to put cottonwood trees in these little islands. After the 1993 flood the Corps went out and bought some land and actually replanted some of these areas. They are now having to block these areas off so the cottonwoods can get a foothold because cattle being fed along the banks and coming down to get water trample and don't let them get a chance to grow to maturity. This is an attempt to get back and reestablish what some say are little havens, they're going to be smaller acreage patches all along the Missouri River. I'm sure that there will be in the year 2004 packaged tours where you can travel the Missouri River and see where Lewis and Clark were. This is just, again, a quick map. Here's Great Falls, which is a beautiful site. Lewis stayed there two days trying the find the words the describe the beauty that he felt at the Great Falls in Montana. The Missouri River is broad and it compares and contrasts much differently to the Colorado River which is narrow and deep in a v shaped canyon. The Missouri is very broad. There are some of these dams that are up to a mile or two miles in width. They are not very high. The Oahe Dam is the third dam down below, it's very close to Pierre, SD, and then there's a the Big Ben Dam, the Fort Randall Dam, The Gavin's Point Dam. The Fort Randall Dam is the newest one on the system but the Gavin's Point is the southern most one. Then the Missouri continues on down and joins the Mississippi River in St. Louis. I suggest to you, using the Missouri River is a marvelous package to incorporate in the classroom.

Let's come to the east and talk about one specific system and another in general. The one specific system was the TVA. Feature this, there are two important times in the 1900s when great numbers of people were looking for jobs, number 1 the 1930s after the depression. There' FDR, he's sees these under the National Recovery Act and if you know your history you know that FDR did not blush at all to take action. He was not a person who would sit back and let Congress dictate things or have them muddle through. He also had the power and he also had the purse strings. The building of dams in the 1930s helped put men to work just as the WPA, the Works Progress Administration, did. Then in the 1945 period to the 1950s the soldiers coming back also needed jobs so there was another activity where creating jobs for a great number of Americans created that building frenzy in the 1950s and early 1960s of building dams. In the 1930s the Federal Government looked at the Tennessee River and the Cumberland River and that area in the eastern United States. They found that there were a great number of coal fired plants. There was also a great deal of ravaging the countryside for abandoned coal mines as well as some acid mine drainage problems. There was a great need for reclamation. Many of those plants were private plants. The Federal Government proposed that a Federal Agency would enter into what previously had been the private sector to provide power. It would create these dams, hydroelectric power and it would help with flooding, money generated from the hydroelectric power could help reclaim the old strip sites. That project was, a number of movies out of Hollywood, as to how it tore at the fabric of America. It was something that had never been done before where the Federal Government was going to go head to head in competition with the private sector. They built the dams and started to coordinate things, even nuclear power plants along the overall TVA project and Authority, coal fired plants, and hydroelectric plants. One thing that was not foreseen was that today recreation is an enormous package of the Tennessee Valley Authority. If you traveled in this region you know of the land between the lakes between the Cumberland River and the Tennessee River. You realize what a huge recreational resource that has become. A side light to this story is that certain Senators from the deep south saw an opportunity after the creation of the TVA to make Mobile, AL, a major competitor. That was their dream, a major competitor with New Orleans for shipping and goods and commerce in the heartland of the eastern United States. In order for this to be done, rather than let the TVA authority and those lock and dam systems flow into the Mississippi drainage basin they were going to connect and create a waterway along the Tombigbee system and connecting the Tennessee River with the Tombigbee. This became known as the Tentom waterway. About 234 miles, 300 feet wide, 9 feet deep. There are a series of 10 locks along this system and it connects Mobile, AL, north, you come north along navigable waterways to get to the lock and dam system and you can actually barge material into the TVA Authority on the Tennessee River. The interesting question is in the Carter Administration they were just finishing this up. You probably will remember the great environmental flap of the snail garter. That was tied up and held up the Tentom waterway system. It did not, however, hold up the spending of the money. No president could fight the groups who were in favor of building that waterway. Labor was in favor of that waterway because of the jobs. The NAACP was in favor of the waterway again because of opening up job opportunities for the minorities in the south. Even though it was a great deal of money, even though the prognosis for success to create Mobile as a major port, didn't seem to be a good likelihood in the 1960s, it was built. Having said that, the central Arizona project was never stopped in its tracks because of powerful Senators in the west. There has always been water issue as a major political force. You back my water project, I'll back your water project. It has been across America as a major thread of politics throughout this century. What is the current situation for the Tentom? Believe it or not the Corps of Engineers said, we're here if you want to take the Tentom and fill it back in, give us the money and we will put it back to the way nature intended it and take everything out. That sounds bizarre, would we do that sort of thing? Possibly. It is possible because in Florida we are working on another river system where the Kissimmee River is a river system where we are taking out waterways and the Army Corps of Engineers is rebuilding, putting back in the meanders. Taking out those straight stretches on the Kissimmee River. The budget for water management in Florida boggles the mind. Billions of dollars a year. Florida has a lot of water but its not all in the right place at the right time for the right people. Remember that we have added not only flood protection, navigation, hydroelectric power generation, irrigation is not as much of a problem in the eastern United States, but reclamation has become an enormous component. There is a river the Atchafalaya River in Mississippi where the Mississippi River when it floods has cut across several times. That's what the Mississippi River would do left to its own design. Cut across, move to the west, abandon the Birdfoot Delta and literally abandon that path through New Orleans. Can we allow that to happen? No. The Army Corps of Engineers has patched that up twice, three times within the past century where flood waters had started to eat through that may join the Mississippi River and the upper reaches with the Atchafalaya River in the southern part and create a whole new path for the Mississippi River. You can't let that happen. Moving up the Mississippi River towards West Virginia we get to the Ohio River basin study. That study was done a number of years ago, initiated almost 20 years ago now, ORBS, Ohio River Basin Study. The only problem was that all the States that were included in the original Ohio River Basin Study, but one. West Virginia was not included in it. Senator Byrd said "Look, we think WV has a major role in the Ohio River Basin Study." We have locks and dams on the Ohio River Basin Study, rather interestingly, in order to create navigation so that we can take coal cheaply to power plants to create electrical power. What we are doing now is that we are retrofitting some of those lock and dam systems with hydroelectric power plants. One on the Ohio River will have the turbine lying horizontally because the vertical fall between the falls is not great. There is a great volume of water to keep that turbine moving constantly. It has to, we can't turn that one off on it's side because it would sag in the middle under it's own weight. We have to keep it rotating. We are retrofitting dams on West Virginia borders, within WV to put in hydroelectric power. If we had done that when we built the dams, it would have cost many, many fewer dollars. But think of the times, have your students think of the times. In the 1940s, 50s, 60s, even in the 1970s, what was the major resource in WV that would generate power? It was not hydroelectric, it was coal. As a result, there was very push to create hydroelectric plants on the Ohio or other tributaries.

We can take other rivers and look at these, the Susquehanna, the Potomac. The Potomac is an excellent system because it also incorporates West Virginia. The Monongahela and the Cheat and the floods in WV and the proposals to change those floods to protect the cities by building more and more dams.

We've covered a variety of topics in this semester, that's the beauty of environmental. Almost anything we can talk about. I hope that you get a chance, if you haven't already done so to see the first 3 videos of Cadillac Desert. The 4^th one, The Last Oasis, if you have a chance, view that. The first 3 are really valuable materials to be familiar with. I hope to see some of you next semester, in the meantime keep thinking about the environment and geology in general, West Virginia specifically. It's been a great deal of fun. I enjoyed those trips out on the exploratories. I thought they were marvelous. Remember again, those were done by your colleagues. Those were planned by teachers. Ed Berry and James Giles, those were done by you in the future could do the same type of thing. Until next time we meet take care and have a great time working on that test. I'll not make it too tough.

WVGES Education Specialist, Tom Repine (repine@wvgs.wvnet.edu)

Page last revised: December 1999

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