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, The Honorable Gale Norton Page 4 00 Secretary of State Powell and I, along with other senior members of the Administration, met with our counterparts from Mexico in Mexico City late last month and discussed those treaty obligations. As you know, Mexico wants more water from the Colorado River. But as we explained to our friends in Mexico, the demands on the River for uses in the United States are increasing. We do not have extra water to send across the border. As Secretary Powell explained, A We are committed to upholding our water treaty obligations.@ We will continue to do so. We expect the Republic of Mexico to do the same. We are working with the International Boundary and Water Commission on efforts to support the recently adopted Minute 306 to the 1944 Treaty. Three of our Interior agencies - the U.S. Geological Survey, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Reclamation-- are engaged with Mexico on a variety of tasks. They include vegetation mapping and habitat restoration. We will continue to work in a cooperative fashion with the Republic of Mexico on Colorado and Rio Grande River issues. We also take very seriously the requirements of the federal Endangered Species Act in the course of managing the Colorado River. Yes, the Act has caused conflict in other river basins, but we are working very hard with our partners in the Colorado River basin to find success instead of conflict. The good news is there are Endangered Species Act success stories that demonstrate the value of consultation and cooperation. The first example of success is the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program. I=ve been involved with this program for a long time. I was a young attorney at Interior when the process began. It was December one year ago when I signed the extension ofthe Cooperative Agreement for the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program. The recovery goals for the humpback chub, bonytail, Colorado pikeminnow and razorback sucker were signed on August 151 by the Fish and Wildlife Service. No one was really certain in 1988 how much progress could be made toward recovering endangered Colorado River fish while allowing the water development needed to serve growing Western communities. But a concerted effort brought together organizations with diverse goals, ranging from state and federal agencies to environmental groups to water and power developers. I cite this as an excellent example of planning ahead to meet the demands of the Endangered Species Act. All jurisdictions need to take Endangered Species Act problems seriously and to factor them into their long-term planning. Upper Colorado River Users came to grips with this more than a dozen years ago and that planning is beginning to show success today. This can be a model that the Klamath and Rio Grande and other basins can follow. Moving downriver, the Department has been moving forward with the Grand Canyon Adaptive Management Program. This is a cooperative process that involves 25 very diverse interests brought together through a Federal Advisory Committee. Ten days ago, the Department approved an innovative and complex experiment that is designed to benefit both endangered fish and to improve sediment retention in Marble and Grand Canyons. This experiment was designed and recommended through the Adaptive Management Working Group. As a result of our earlier 1996 experiment releasing flows from Glen Canyon Dam, we learned that flooding http://www.doi.gov/news/nortonI.html 12/1612003