OSHR 1611 - Whiskey’s For Drinking; Water Is For Fighting: The Social Organization of Water in Colorado

This course is offered through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at Colorado State University. You must be a member of Osher to enroll in this course.

Mark Twain once said, "Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting." In an arid land, water fights erupted early in European settlement, but the conflicts were resolved first by organizing canals, then rivers, then plains reservoirs, then trans-mountain imports, then agricultural wells, and by making inter-state agreements.

These include Supreme Court settlements and a three-state, basin-wide agreement to recover, restore and sustain habitat for species listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.

This course will describe how citizens have organized water for agriculture, cities, and recent environmental agendas. System issues of enhanced storage and increasing water demand will be addressed. Our central focus will be on the Cache La Poudre and South Platte Rivers.

Recommended Reading: Jones, P. Andrew Jones and Cech, Tom. Colorado Water Law for Non-Lawyers. U. Press of Colorado, 2009, ISBN 978-0-87081-950-6 (paperback).

Noncredit courses do not produce academic credit nor appear on a Colorado State University academic transcript.

Instructors

David Freeman

David Freeman is professor emeritus at CSU. He has had 43 years of teaching and research experience in the domain of social conflict. Grist for his analytical mills has come from social development experience - especially with regard to water resources organizations and social conflict - in Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and the Western United States. He has been published widely in the refereed literature regarding the analysis of social conflict in the variety of its forms, and he has taught undergraduate and graduate students in the domain of terrorism - domestic and international - for virtually all of his professional life.