Transcript

Getches: The biggest challenge is the way we make decisions about how we're going to use water

I think that as Commissioner Keys said, we are not going to make any more water. That won't be the solution to our future problems. The solution is partly going to be technological, but I think that the biggest challenge is going to be the way we make decisions about how to use water. Every one of our state constitutions and state statutes says that water is the property of the people; water belongs to the public. Yet still represented in water decisions, year after year, are primarily the people who have property rights in water. And it is appropriate that they be there. But we are going to have to set a very big table to make the decisions in the future, if they are going to hold water. And we are going to have to seat at that table governments -- federal, state, local, tribal -- and land use planners, and we are going to have to have respect for the fish and wildlife and natural world that was neglected in setting up our original system. And take this old house that we've inherited and build on the old foundation something that really does work for the modern world. I think it can be done, but it's really a people problem, not a physical problem.

Back to Discussion page