Day 2: June 9th

Today we visited the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL)  in Boulder. We discussed wind and solar in great detail and touched on energy efficient buildings and biofuels. I was shocked by the size of the largest wind turbines. The 3.0 megawatt turbines have blades as long as football fields. and they aren't the largest. She was mentioning how the Dakota's have great wind potential but the only problem there is mineral rights. All the land is already bought up for possible extraction of minerals in the future. So they have trouble finding areas to build wind farms. NREL provides a map of the United States that shows areas with wind potential . You can see that the Dakotas have great potential and also that New Jersey has excellent potential off shore. She also mentioned this and the debate happening in New Jersey over it.

She brought up the point of migratory birds but she believes the birds wouldn't be affected to greatly. And the other topic of debate is that the turbines may disrupt the view of the ocean from the beach. But she mentions that the turbines would be so far out in the ocean people wouldn't even be able to notice they were there. This shows on the map, the further off the coast the better the winds are for turbines. I defintly believe power will be produced more and more by wind in the future because according to the speaker, the technology is growing at a tremendous rate. I also found it interesting when she was explaining that the scientists at the lab come up with ideas by accident. Many energy efficient building designs they have come up with, they have come up by accident through experimentation for other proposed designs.
After our visit at the NREL we drove to a library where we would discuss water resources of the west. Our speaker was Karen from Western Resource Advocates. She is a lawyer who specialized in water rights. She shocked the class when she told us the seriousness of laws invloving water rights. There are serious fines and even jailtime in some cases. Water is scarce in the West and taken extremely serious. I learned that many of the laws are from the early 1800s and are very unfair today. For instance water rights only acknowlegde the people with the rights. If one has the rights to the water they can do whatever they wish with it, they can dam it and prevent it from flowing anywhere. This leaves people with no water rights in a hard spot and they have to be careful with what they do with flowing water. I really enjoyed her discussion because she touched so much on the restoration of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. She had a lot to say and was highly acurate with what is happening to the ecosystems in the portion of the river thanks to the damming at Lake Powell by Glenn Canyon Dam. Everything she touched on about the river's troubled ecosystem was mentioned in the book we read prior to the trip. We read Restoring Colorado River Ecosystems by  Robert W. Adler and I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was very thorough and gave a great sense of what is happening to the river. This speaker was excellent because of how concise her lecture was and again how the class could relate a book that we read to her talk.

The day wasn't over yet after Karen's talk. We stopped in Boulder to take a look around before we made it back to the campsite. Patrick Hossay (Stockton professor that was with us for the first week and a half) discussed the development of the city of Boulder. He explained how the city has become much nicer after its redevelopment. The city turned their industrial area into a tourist attraction. It is now a nice downtown area with shops and restaurants that are set off from the roads to encourage walking or the use of bikes over driving. I fell in love with the downtown area and we were only there for a half hour. I wish more towns decided to take this approach for their downtown area.