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THE CHANGING ROLE OF TH E SECRETARY ON TH E COLORADO RIVER For others, the allegations made about the projects, or the conditions which were to be imposed were sharpened so that the basis of the challenge was clear. The early, less detailed announcement was made because the President's first budget was going up and it went up with the 30. Once the Water Project Review was done, the President sent up a supplemen- tal budget which showed amendments to the so- called hit list. That appropriation bill was fought out that year. It became clear to most of us, frankly, that, in spite of all the controversy, there appeared to be enough [votes] to overcome a veto. If the President vetoed it, his veto could be sustained. I think that the Congress recognized this fact, and at the end, there was a deal struck, and concessions were made with regard to a number of the projects, but the President vetoed that appropriation anyway. Those of us who worked on it, suffered on it and had gone to the wall to try to support it were pretty disappointed becausewe thought we could have sustained some- thing better than we actually got that year. But, in any event, that's what happened. The CAP was a prime Colorado River example. There were a number of com- ments made about the CAP that dealt with economics and other things. But the one that is worth highlighting here is the idea of asking Arizona to impose a groundwater code so that when the CAP was funded and water was brought into the state, it would not simply be a way to subsidize the continued mining of groundwater. At the outset, Bruce Babbitt and I spent a lot of time talking with Andrus and others about this very point. In the beginning, Bruce was very angry and somewhat frightened, I think, about it. He was Attorney General for the remainder of that year, facing Evan Meecham for governor. Once Bruce won that election, he relaxed a little bit. From that point forward, Bruce and I and the Secretary played a little game in which Bruce would call us up when he needed the drums to be beaten about CAP funding in order to get progress from the Arizona Legislature on a groundwater code. Ultimately, a groundwater code We were literally pilloried, tarred and feathered and ridden out of town for suggesting cost sharing in the SYMPOSIUM PROCEEDINGS SEPTEMBER 1999 <9 amount of 5 percent. How would you like that deal today? - Guy Martin was enacted. There was also litigation in Arizona which made it important, almost mandatory, to have a groundwater code, but it wasn't moving very quickly. Congressman Udall, by the way, when the CAP was challenged said, "The President of the United States has issued a challenge to water projects across the Western United States and it is a valid and good challenge, raising issues that are long overdue. I plan to support it, except that he's made a mistake on one single project [the CAP]. And for that reason," he said, "I intend to take a statesmanlike role on this, that is, I will do whatever my state wants me to do." We went into the next appropriation cycle and the President persevered. The same challenges went up again - no funding for some projects. There were many angry hearings. At that point, the criticism changed to the fact that the President was not basing his challenge to these water projects on any signifi- cant policy. Now, that was not exactly fair condemna- tion because no other president had a comprehensive policy on water in this century. But this was the attack. Carter decided that he would have a comprehen- sive policy on water and he set up a vast structure to construct it. That effort included innumerable working groups, cooperation with the states, to the extent that they would cooperate - there was a terrific amount of distrust - public hearings, a lot of research and other things. It took over two years but, ulti- mately, the Carter water policy was issued. I was just talking to David Getches and I agree with his conclusion - this water policy holds up very well. It addressed issues, like Indian water rights, in a way that proved useful during the '80s as some of these controversies were trying to be negotiated; it ad- dressed water conservation; and it broached cost sharing in a comprehensive way. In fact, this will give you a laugh. We were literally pilloried, tarred and feathered and ridden out of town for suggesting cost sharing in the amount of 5 percent. How would you like that deal today? But the water users just thought that was the most outrageous thing in the world that it would be 5 percent. When I look back at the Colorado River issues during the Carter era, and Secretary Andrus agreed with me, it really wasn't so much that there was a focus on the Colorado River. There was work done on allocations and there was the usual pot-stirring that went on down there, but basically the work that Andrus and the Carter Water Policy did was to set a series of standards that applied to the Colorado, in fact, they applied to the entire Western water project mentality and proposed standards for how they were going to be treated in the future.