History M.A. Alumna Co-Authors Article for the Arcadia

History graduate alumna Stacy Roberts recently co-authored an article in Arcadia, an online, peer-reviewed journal jointly supported by the Rachel Carson Center and the European Society for Environmental History. The article, “‘Citizens of a Watershed’: The Colorado River Compact and the Exigencies of Drought,” traces Patricia Mulroy’s efforts to spearhead interstate negotiations concerning water allocation along the Colorado River. Mulroy, who served as head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority from 1993 to 2014 as well as the lead negotiator for Nevada during the talks, spent the majority of her career bringing together disparate communities in and around Las Vegas in an effort to combat issues of water usage and scarcity in the drought-plagued areas of Nevada. For two decades, Mulroy worked with leaders from the entire Colorado River community, which included seven U.S. states in the American Southwest and Mexico, to usher in a new era of cooperation in water allocation, distribution, and conservation. 

Read the full article (and watch the accompanying videos!) in Arcadia. 

Stacy graduated with her M.A. in history from NC State in 2014. She is currently a Ph.D. student in history and a U.S. National Science Foundation IGERT Trainee in Climate Change, Water, and Society at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on the environmental history of the American South in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.