GSA PRESIDENT'S MEDAL: WATER AND COAL DEVELOPMENT IMPACTS ON THE NAVAJO NATION ASSESSED BY THE INTERDISCIPLINARY LAKE POWELL RESEARCH PROJECT 1971-1977

In 1970, the National Science Foundation began funding applied research through “Interdisciplinary Research Relating to the Problems of Society” (IRRPOS), then “Research Applied to National Needs” (RANN) in 1971. At the 1970 Upper Mantle Project meeting in Flagstaff AZ, geophysicists Orson Anderson and Charles Drake planned an IRRPOS proposal on impacts of the newly filled Lake Powell and coal development at Black Mesa. They convinced me to leave my tenure-track metamorphic petrology position at Boston College and join them at the Museum of Northern Arizona and UCLA as Executive Secretary and Editor for the Lake Powell Research Project (LPRP), “Collaborative Research on the Assessment of Man’s Activities in the Lake Powell Region.” At its peak, LPRP comprised 19 subprojects at 9 institutions with 26 Senior Investigators in natural and social sciences, law and medicine. LPRP revealed serious past water deficits in the Colorado River Basin through tree ring studies, found that energy-related industrialization was not significantly improving the economic condition of the Navajo people, and identified systemic threats to Navajo water rights. Our LPRP experience led both Carole Goldberg (UCLA Law) and me at Nebraska to become campus compliance officials for the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.