Transcript

David Getches: The most effective way to get water in the streams is through federal regulation

Well, I think a part of it is that it's not about justice, it's about law. And the way our legal system works is that you have to have legal rights to be represented. Now, that doesn't make it unthinkable that we will get water back into the streams. In fact we are getting water back into a number of streams, and we are getting it there through some of these state instream flow laws, and I will say another word about that in just a second, we are getting it back in through a re-operation of some federal facilities, and we are getting it back through private efforts where people get some money together and buy water rights. Now, none of this adequate. The most effective way to get water in streams is very uncomfortable -- it is through federal regulation, it is through the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and the strange laws that come from Washington DC and set the teeth of westerners on edge. Now is there an alternative to that? Theoretically there is and that is for state laws to modernize. I am not talking about throwing out the prior appropriation doctrine but I am talking about putting real meaning into those words -- 'beneficial use' and 'public interest' and 'public participation.' Where we have seen progress made, it's usually been with the federal gun at the back of water users and that's not very comfortable. Or it has been more happily right next to the ground where people of goodwill get together in a community and they decide they are going to save a stream and they do it notwithstanding whatever state or federal laws say. They work out a practical solution and then sell it to the officials. So we have problems being solved at the top in Washington, down here on the ground with the grassroots, and I think that the solution to your problem, our problem, is for us to take a lesson from that experience. This has really just been the last 10 years or 20 years that it's been like this. And for those state laws to modernize, is that going to happen? There is something good about the drought. The drought puts on the front page of the New York Times stories about water, and it puts on TV programs about water. And as public awareness and political awareness increases, people will be ready to make some changes in our laws so that they work better and we don't have to throw them out wholesale. We can say we saved this and the system works better now.

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