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One can make an even longer list. The fact of the matter was, a huge amount of very intense contro- versy needed to be cleared out of the way, simply in order to set the stage for some kind of voluntary agreements. Now, as you all know, the negotiations leading to this have been moving forward and everyone hopes that they will come to a successful conclusion. If they do, a whole series of longstanding, very difficult problems will be on the way to an important kind of resolution. What I have described here, all these various factors, interestingly, are the things that go into a decision about how something gets onto the secre- tarial agenda. And why sometimes things don't get onto the secretarial agenda. The fact of the matter is that, in a certain sense, even today there isn't what you'd call a water crisis, there's a kind of legal crisis, or at least a legal crisis that precedes the water crisis. That fact has made it possible for officials who want to defer dealing with this problem to do so. Secretary Babbitt decided not to defer because he thought it was important, if you could make the markets begin to happen in a way that was mutually agreeable to all the stakeholders, to set a precedent that would help to move forward on west wide water problems, though they are different in their details. Let me take the remaining few minutes to say something that relates both to the Upper Basin and Lower Basin. Of course, it has to do with environ- mental issues because the other factually significant thing on the Colorado that I think particularly intensely faced this administration was that the demand to meet environmental needs on the river came to a head. Again, you had a very difficult problem, that is, how do you take a river which has, in a sense, been fully parceled out without any accommodation for environmental demands and now try to meet those demands without disappointing the expectations and entitlement of all the people - whether they're currently using the water or not using the water - to a river that has, in effect, been fully allocated. Here, I think, all one needs to say is that the policy that the Secretary has adopted is of a piece with another sort of major policy view he held about what ought to be done as to environmental issues. The idea is to try to demonstrate that it is possible to meet the legal demands of these new environmental laws and, of course, most crucially, of the Endangered Species Act without creating a crisis of disappoint- ment of expectations for those people who have been using the resources in the past. It takes a lot of fancy footwork to try to make this happen, that is, to do something other than what might conventionally have been the case, which is to go into a sort of heavy regulatory mode and let the chips fall where they may. What all of you have heard in many, many speeches and presentations that the Secretary has made, is that he wanted to show that it was possible to make the Endangered Species Act work. He sought to meet the demands of that Act without creating an economic crisis, whether it was for traditional water users or land users. That approach has been one of the centerpieces of his policy. It has been the effort that has also been made into the various elements of MSCP [Multi-Species Conservation Program] and salinity issues on the Colorado River. So there is a larger policy idea underlaying both of these two primary issues, that is, settling the Lower Colorado shortage issue, and dealing with environmental issues all the way up and down the river. QUESTION FROM THE AUDIENCE: IfI could ask you all for a minute to pull out your crystal ball and look into the future for us - since you've done such a good job of presenting some of what's gone on in the past - what do you think are the issues relating to the Colorado River that the next administration is going to face and how do you think that Interior should deal with some of those issues? MARTIN: The answer to that question depends almost entirely on the success of Secretary Babbitt's and Joe Sax's initiative. If they're successful, then they have the possibility of wiping away some of the most troublesome controversies, or at least putting them in a second tier for implementation of an agreement. If it doesn't happen, obviously then we're just back into the same old deal and it's just more of the same. If it does happen, what I would expect to see is continued demands for environmental compliance on the river and insistence on the analysis of actions which were taken and looking to provisions for water over time in the context of multi-species plans or other issues. QUESTION FROM THE AUDIENCE: This is for Mr. Sax. I agree with you, Mr. Sax, that this administration has been rather successful in designing recovery programs for the endangered species while protecting existing uses. The problem has been [with Indian water rights). In particular, I would refer you to the situation in the four corners area with the four Indian tribes who are affected by the implementation of the Endangered Species Act with regard to the use of their water rights. Now, you have the Animas LaPlata Project, which is still quite stalled, so that that does not create a real serious problem currently. I think the Navajo Indian THE CHANGING ROLE OF TH E SECRETARY ON THE COLORADO RIVER SYMPOSIUM PROCEEDINGS SEPTEMBER 1999 o