9298

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 9298
• Author: Water Education Foundation.
• Title: Colorado River Project
• USFW Year: 1999.
• USFW - Doc Type: Symposium Proceedings.
• Copyright Material: NO

SYMPOSIUM
PROCEEDINGS
SEPTEMBER 1999

MODERATOR:

GARY WEATHERFORD, ATTORNEY,

WEATHERFORD AND TAAFFE
I don't know about you, but I've been struck that,
with the three panels to date, the major theme
evolving here in terms of the Law of the River is
evolution. This is san important message for all of us
who have lived with this Law of the River and have
been students of it for decades. Two decades ago,
whenever you were talking about the Law of the
River, as Pam mentioned in the last panel, you were
talking about words written in stone. That was
probably the characterization that would have been
the most popular.
Now we're almost into evolutionary biology and
we've moved from the inanimate to the organic when
we're talking about the Law of the River. I think that
is appropriate. If you look back to all of the elements
of the Law of the River, each one has an antecedent

o

Panelists (left to right); Rita Pearson, Arizona
Department of "Water Resources; Gary Hansen,
Colorado River Indian Tribes; Patricia Mulroy,
Southern Nevada "Water Authority; Michael
Quealy, state of Utah; Moderator Gary
Weatherford, Attorney, Weatherford and Taaffe;
Philip Mutz, New Mexico Interstate Stream
Commission; and Dennis Underwood,
Metropolitan "Water District of Southern
California.

of some kind of social pressure. So the Law of the
River is really an accumulation of adaptive responses
to social pressure and, in most cases, to perceived
problems. That means it is an ever changing problem-
solving body of rules.
Having said that, I think for many of us, those
changes move at a glacial pace. But there, too, some
caution is always legitimate when you're asked to
loosen your grip on the status quo, to grab onto
something new. The first rule of wing walking is that
you don't let go of one strut until you have another
one in hand. Inherent caution is prudent when you're
asked to take hold of something new.
The particular element of change this panel is
going to focus on arises from the very simple fact that