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<br />000718 <br /> <br />These new managerial issues also suggest a striking paradox. To manage on a watershed level <br />(or some even more embracing ecological level) may call for more centralized administration. Bigger <br />governance units seem- to imply bigger government. Yet at the same time we have been experiencing <br />strong desires along a broad spectrum for more local autonomy.8 Oddly enough, localism has been a <br />rallying call both for political conservatives and for important elements of the environmental communi~. <br />And localism, as I noted a moment ago, is central to riparianlcommunitarian ideology. To note the . <br />paradox even more pointedly, I call to your attention the popular support for what are usually called local <br />"watershed" councils: an interesting name, yet these entities are ordinarily focused only on a segment of <br />a watershed. Another question we need to address is how well watershed management in the large <br />comports with this desire for more local participation and autonomy. <br /> <br />To be sure, between pure localism and total centralization of authority there is a wide range of <br />intermediate choices. Recent efforts to deal with regional water problems, as on the Platte River, the Rio <br />Grande, the Colorado, and the Sacramento/San Joaquin, have spawned some rather novel sorts of <br />collaborative entities, borne out of negotiation (and sometimes litigation). They bring local stakeholders <br />together with state and federal officials, generating new forms of governance that are essentially created <br />contractually, rather than through the political process. One interesting question that should arise during <br />this conference is whether we are seeing viable new institutional arrangements being fitted to the <br />hydrological realities, and a genuine withering away of some of the old boundaries and the old politics. If <br />. so, one core question is what the power relationships are in the new entities thus created? To read current <br />press reports about Cal-Fed, for example, is to hear about a great deal of unresolved conflict, suggesting <br />that power relationships are still significantly unresolved. In another setting, we see the ongoing MSCP <br />(Multiple Species Conservation Plan) on the Lower Colorado River moving ahead though the <br />environmental organization participants have walked out ofthe process. Is this a workable process, or <br />simply a prelude to litigation somewhere down the line? <br /> <br />8 E.g., Sean T. McAllister, "The Confluence of a River and a Community: An Experiment with <br />Community-Based Watershed Management in Southwestern Colorado", 3 Water Law Rev. 287 (2000). <br /> <br />4 <br /> <br />4 <br /> <br />