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John Wiener, Comments to SWSI, September 2004 3 2. Turning back to less philosophical issues, to the extent that the SWSI data can be characterized by sources of uncertainty, that will be valuable policy information. If the suspected small-budget problem exists, where limited staff and capacity inhibits planning and acquisition of future-needed water supply, there may be guidance for legislative choices. If the uncertainties are greatest in certain areas, there may be grounds for regional discussions, as in the regional councils of government cooperation on other problems. Why uncertainty exists is important, in terms of policy-relevant choices within existing authority and funding. 3. The CWCB or SWSI team's distinction of "environmental enhancement" from "mitigation" is valuable, and should be elaborated. Proactive enhancement or restoration could be far less expensive and far more effective than reactive efforts to undo adverse effects. In many of the references on biological issues, the point was strongly made concerning the importance of retaining adequate intact wetlands of all kinds (see Wiener, comments to SWSI on biological issues in water transfers, August 2004). Restoration or recovery may in fact be impossible in some cases. As the Platte River Recovery Program has shown, reaction can be difficult and enormously expensive where many parties are involved. It may be very productive to apply the kind of .scoping" that was originally intended in some regulatory ideas: the critical questions are not only about whether to do a proposed action, but whether the action is optimally scaled - right-sized, and for whose interests? - and optimally designed - are the additional costs or benefits that should be understood? Opening the water project process in some cases could be critical to ensuring that all potentially benefited or costed parties can participate in project design. This is not a mushy-fuzzy idea - joint marketing and joint design processes are common in business. Office buildings, for example, are typically designed with preferred clients in mind, and also to retain flexibility for other legally-allowed uses, such that retail potential is seldom foreclosed by mechanical design choices even if offices are the primary expectation. Right-sizing may call for larger projects than the originating party could use alone, but there is a public interest in the Colorado Constitutional mandate to maximize beneficial use of water. The joint benefits from projects with environmental enhancements might well support tax adjustments, or elicit supporting contributions or financing participation from others in the private sector or local or regional governments. Creative contributions such as use of easements to reduce safety needs are also discoverable in full scoping discussions. People are willing to pay. It is important to observe that public contributions are not as rare as some imply in comments about .put up or shut up". Recent controversy over purchase of grazing allotments on public lands, for conservation purposes, arose from private willingness to pay for the allotments, and ideological opposition seeking to disallow using the market for those purposes. In Colorado, the new instream-flow donations law, allowing contribution beyond the "minimum reasonable" standard for the CWCB's program, was a demonstration of public demand to be allowed to contribute to environmental enhancement. Every public open-space program reflects public will to be taxed to buy amenity and environmental values. The increased value of lake-side or stream-side property shows private value in amenity, and increases public revenues from increased tax base. 4. Because the Basin Round Table and SWSI/CWCB staff people have been very busy, an oral comment was made to point out that the literature review of biological issues (Wiener, August 2004 comments) suggests that there may be considerably greater threat of crossing environmental thresholds than has been suspected, due to the problem of unknown conditions. Very roughly, one might say that the drainage and conversion of almost all natural wetlands on the Eastern Plains and foothills was accompanied by creation of two unintended substitutes. First, there was florescence of cottonwood and big willow woody vegetation along the newly- stabilized channels, with much longer periods and usually much higher volumes of flow. These large trees have not been able to reproduce much, and are in some places senescent, and being replaced by under-story vegetation and by invasives which are prominent in the Arkansas and