Two Dartmouth students will explore water-related environmental issues this fall with support from a $1,000 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant.
The Outdoor Programs Office that oversees the Dartmouth Outing Club, awarded grants to Lara Burgel '96 and Kristin Foord '95.
Burgel will study "Water Resource Management: the Warm Springs Tribe and Central Oregon" and Foord will research "New Hampshire's Abandoned Mines: possible source of arsenic in drinking water?" with the grants.
In an abstract of her project, Brugel wrote, "In the state of Oregon, a place generally considered to have an abundance of water, the availability of water and who is allowed to use it has become increasingly important."
Burgel wrote that she would explore the issue of water management in central Oregon from all sides, including the federal and local governments and the Native American tribes in the region.In an interview yesterday, Burgel said became interested in the topic at an early age and has maintained her interest in water management at the College.
Burgel said that growing up in Idaho, and later Oregon, in a family that enjoyed outdoor activities made her become very interested in water issues by high school.
As a junior in high school she wrote a paper on water rights issues and, as a freshman at the College last year took Geography 14: Water Resource Management with Professor Frank Magilligan.
In that class, she said she was "dissatisfied with amount of time for research" on her final paper and applied for a freshman research grant to study water issues in the Oregon tribal area more closely.
The Mellon Grant, she said, will allow her to do more in-depth research this fall and to rewrite that paper.
Although Burgel is an Asian Studies and Government major, she said she sees water right issues as a side-project and a "private education" that is separate from her other studies at the College.
"It's an interesting subject," she said. "There are a lot more variables to it than you would think," including fishing rights, irrigation and industrial recreational usage.
She said in September she will attend a water rights research conference in California that will be attended by lawyers, government officials and Native American tribal representatives.
She will then return home to Oregon, where she will conduct her research, talk with people about the issue, research newspapers and journals, and study legislation.
Burgel also received a $1,000 Waterhouse Grant, given for independent public policy research, for the project.
Foord will study arsenic-contaminated drinking water in New Hampshire and its possible source.
She will be analyzing tap-water samples and investigating abandoned mines in the areas to determine if the abandoned metals in the mine are possibly contaminating the water supply.
