Colorado Mountain College junior Sabrina Blauvelt has an aerial perspective of water conservation.

The Red Lodge native and recent Kalispell resident participated in a five-day Flight Across America college student program through EcoFlight. The program involved a three-day aerial tour mainly over Colorado, Arizona and Utah in October.

“You don’t get this kind of view driving in your car,” Blauvelt said.

Flight Across America was created to inform college-age students about current conservation issues. Through an aerial perspective and ground tours of energy industries,  the program show them how such issues impact the environment around them.

Blauvelt, who is majoring in sustainability studies, heard about the program from a friend who had participated in the EcoFlight program and learned about air pollution in Arizona’s Grand Canyon and Utah’s Arches National Park.

Flying with several other college students, Blauvelt explored how coal, natural gas, hydroelectric, recreational development and wildlife habitats affect water conservation in the Upper Colorado River Basin.

“The [Colorado River] water hasn’t touched the Gulf of Mexico since 1998. The waters are flowing mainly to industries rather than the Gulf of Mexico,” Blauvelt said. “A once lush basin is now dry, arid and infertile.

“We recreate on it, dam it, use it for oil fracking,” she added. “We ask too much of water and we’re pretty much coming to a point where there’s not enough water to do what we’re asking of it.”

During the program, Blauvelt visited APS Four Corners, a coal-fired power plant based in New Mexico on the Navajo Nation, and Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona. She also met with numerous experts that had differing perspectives including representatives from the Glen Canyon Institute, Thompson Divide Coalition and Navajo Nation.

 Blauvelt learned that 75 percent of APS Four Corners employees were from the Navajo Nation, creating a possible conflict of values.

“The Navajo believe there is no distinction between nature and themselves, so they need the land to be healthy and the land needs them to be healthy,” Blauvelt said. “The Navajo believe they are the land. Our tour guide was Navajo. He had mentioned how we need to go to renewable energy, but we don’t have the infrastructure to do that currently.”

She discovered that feeding energy consumption, creating jobs, improving the economy and protecting natural ecosystems are all elements that make it a divisive issue.

In conversations with the nonprofit Glen Canyon Institute, representatives advocated draining Lake Powell, a Colorado River manmade reservoir on the Utah and Arizona border.

On the other hand, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area park rangers contend Lake Powell has a significant local economic and recreational impact on that area.

“We all understand we need forms of energy and we’re all part of this collective using finite resources,” Blauvelt said. “People need to be educated on how to use less water and encouraged through incentives.”

After her Flight Across America experience Blauvelt had to write a letter to the editor and submit an article to a newspaper.

“My letter to the editor was voicing an opinion about using rhetoric. People need to listen to all sides and beliefs should be taken into consideration whether they’re right or not,” Blauvelt said.

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or by email at [email protected].