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<br />Western States Water Council <br />Executive Committee Minutes <br /> <br />San Antonio, Texas <br />October 20,2005 <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />Governor's office will want to have a plenary to raise the issues. Otherwise, the other option is to <br />develop a report, to be presented during the business meeting of the governors at the 2006 Annual <br />Meeting (and the report would likely be presented by Hal). The governors would either accept or <br />reject it. <br /> <br />Weir Labatt suggested he felt it would be reasonable to get the governors' support for the <br />stream gaging effort. Pat Tyrrell commented, "Sustainability of what? It seems like sustainability and <br />growth, depending on how they are addressed, are somewhat at odds. What are you trying to sustain? <br />A rate of growth? So I'm a little confused. And the drought relief act portion of Herb's proposal, I <br />wonder why we need to draft another bill patterned after the Stafford Act. " <br /> <br />Shaun responded that the purpose of the November 8-9 meeting is for the governor's offices to <br />start having discussion about what "sustainability" or "sustainable growth" means. Governor <br />Napolitano stated that what she was thinking about was that if you look at the Census Bureau's <br />projections for growth over the next 10-20 years, how can we meet the demands for that growth. <br />Clearly water has to be included in the discussion. <br /> <br />Pat Tyrrell: It seems to me that if you are trying to meet sustainable growth, then augmentation <br />and the other things included in Herb's letter have to be part of it. For instance, looking at the <br />Colorado River Basin, which is not dissimilar from other basins, but in the Colorado in particular, . <br />sustainable growth and existing supplies are at odds. I think augmentation is very important. My <br />question is how do we put that forward. Do you know if Herb was saying to support another drought <br />relief act, or just to support the one that is already out there? <br /> <br />A response was that the thrust of his point would be simply to address the issue, whether it is a <br />new bill or an existing one. The existing drought act applies nationally. There is a long history of <br />WGA support for the existing bill, and in fact, implementation of the National Integrated Drought <br />Integrated System (NIDIS) is a component of the Act. The items in Herb's list all seem to line up well <br />with the kinds of things we need to bring to the level of the governors' attention. <br /> <br />It may be well to approach this from the perspective of asking how each of the western states <br />are currently meeting the demands for water, and then add the next layer of how to meet the demands <br />with 20-30% growth within the next 10-20 years. Once you've made that presentation, then you can <br />state recommendations for getting there - whether it's the drought bill, better monitoring, desalination, <br />and so forth - make the case for why there will be challenges given current allocations and future <br />growth. <br /> <br />Shaun said that today, during this discussion, we need to get a concept of how the Council <br />could play into the WGA discussion at the November 8-9 meeting - get information to Craig that he <br />can take to the meeting so that it can be included in the mix. The risk is that if we don't come in with a <br />good idea of where to head, then the governors will leave water out of the mix and the opportunity will <br />have been lost. <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />4 <br />