Dear Colleagues: I would like to bring this conference to your attention with the hope that you and/or your students would be interested in attending.

The conference web site contains all relevant registration and program information, though if you have any questions please feel free to contact me. I'd appreciate it too if you would forward this announcement to any other colleagues and friends who might be interested in participating what should prove to be an exciting conference.

Sanctioned as an official meeting of the American Society for Environmental History, "Water Crises in Texas and the Southwest" will set the contemporary and often bitter debates over water in their historical context. The human stakeholders in these ongoing struggles are many, and many of their arguments often take place without a real appreciation for the degree to which the relevant controversies have been shaped by decades of accumulated argument.

An interdisciplinary array of scholars will help us penetrate the layers of debate surrounding these points of contention that have roiled the region over the past three centuries. Geographers, historians, legal scholars, and political scientists will probe such matters as water and tourism, Spanish Colonial water laws in the southwest, Native American water rights, dams and urban water supplies, irrigation and grasslands agriculture, and water quality and aquifers in the Lone Star State.

In addition, on the evening of Friday May 22, there will be a public forum on the Edwards Aquifer, the sole source of water for the San Antonio region. Saturday, May 23, will be devoted to a series of guided tours of selected sites of considerable importance to the history of water in south central Texas, including the Hill Country and aquifer recharge zones, the San Antonio Missions National Historic Park, and a backstage look at the fabled San Antonio Riverwalk; seating for these tours is limited, so please sign up in advance.

Housing accommodations are available in the sumptuous dormitories of Trinity University, and all participants are urged to stay on campus. This will enable us to interact continuously in an environment of superb facilities for a remarkable price (4 nights, including many meals, will run $175); in a city designed to soak tourists, this is a steal! For more information about the conference program, registration, and the Trinity University campus, see this web site:

http://www.trinity.edu/departments/continuing_ed/aseh.html

Information is also be available by contacting Hugh Daschbach, Conference Coordinator, 210-999-7601.
Char Miller, History Department, Trinity University, is Conference Organizer

SPONSORS: This conference is made possible in part by a grant from the Texas Council for the Humanities, a State Partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and by Trinity University, the Semmes Foundation, INC., the Center for Hazards and Environmental Geography, of the Department of Geography & Planning at Southwest Texas State University, and the Trinity University History, Physics, and Political Science Departments.

Link: http://www.trinity.edu/departments/continuing_ed/aseh.html