The Flood probably won't do us in, but water--or the lack of it--might. Thirsty big cities are expropriating more and more water resources from rural agricultural areas and creating a wave of controversy in the process. A century ago, rivers flowing from the mountains helped support year-round ranching in the South Park area near Denver. Today, says Cathy Kindquist '78, an assistant professor of geography at Radford University in Virginia, cities like Aurora, Colo., are buying up water rights to ensure their own growth, and ranchers are being devastated by the loss of their water. "More than seventy-five percent of the water rights originally for irrigation are now in urban hands. It's all legal, using legal channels to transfer rights downstream," said Kindquist, whose Ph.D. dissertation at the University of British Columbia examined the historical background of human-environmental interaction and the impact of the sale of water rights on rural communities. Her work has been written up in Colorado newspapers and plunged her into the dispute swirling around water rights. "You're seeing not just a key resource being taken [from the ranching community] but an entire change in the landscape, the local economy, the tax base and the area's future," said Kindquist. The issue currently is tied up in Colorado courts, where she foresees that key elements of water laws in the West will be worked out. "I never thought about water--the social and psychological effects of control over water--when I was in Maine," said Kindquist, a psychology major who went on to study psychology at the University of Denver. While working at a mental health clinic, she saw an increase in the number of people turning to social services as a result of the drastically changing situation in South Park. The influence of the environment and water resources on human behavior and society proved "more down to earth than psychology. I've just parachuted into this," she said. The planet is in deep water, Kindquist argues metaphorically, and she foresees repeated agricultural-to-municipal water transfers in the future--and on a global scale. China, for instance, is building huge dams on the headwaters of the Mekong River, the lifeblood of Southeast Asia, to harness more energy for irrigation and urban growth. "And what happens to Cambodia?" Kindquist said. World population growth and rising living standards of developing nations will increase the demand for food, power to run lights and water for household consumption, says Kindquist. The supply of water is constant, but the quality of renewable water is not, and as quality declines, she says, quantity will become an issue. She doubts that proposed remedies--floating icebergs to the Middle East or replumbing the planet by running the Mackenzie River the other way--are feasible or environmentally sound. At Radford, Kindquist has tied her research in water issues in the Western states to Eastern water quantity and quality issues that might play out as water quality declines. Meanwhile, she says, she loves teaching undergraduates. "Colby," she added, "did a heck of a job of preparing me for this."