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I I I I I I I I I I 'I I I I I I I I I claimed that instream flows were needed to support the purposes for which Congress had established the national forest system. Reserved instream water rights were therefore created concurrently with the designation of federal lands as national forest, according to the Forest Service's attorneys. In 1978 the Supreme Court rejected this argument, stating that Congress's original intent in establishing the national forest system in 1897 did not include the protection of instream resources.31 Instead, the primary purposes of the national forests were to promote timber supplies and to protect forested watersheds to prevent flooding and facilitate the delivery of reliable water supplies. The original purposes, the Court concluded, did not include recreational or environmental amenities. In response to this defeat, the Forest Service undertook to establish instream flow rights based on the Supreme Court's finding that a primary purpose of the national forests was "securing favorable conditions of flow" to prevent flooding and to deliver reliable water supplies to downstream users.32 The Forest Service's new instream flow claims are based on the fact that instream flows help transport sediment which could otherwise clog stream channels to create erosion and flooding problems. Without viable stream channels maintained by instream flows, the national forests could not secure favorable conditions of flow for downstream users as mandated by Congress. This argument is currently being asserted by the Forest Service in several western states, with ultimate resolution of the issue uncertain.33 Another unresolved reserved instream water rights issue involves federal wilderness areas. The Task Ahead: Broadening the Vision While the origins of instream flow law trace back to the early part of this century the modem era of recognizing and protecting in-place values of water is effectively only a generation old. Much has been accomplished in this roughly 20-year period. As the western states move into second-generation programs, policies, and laws much remains ,to be done. We identify here some issues that should be given attention in this on-going process. Most of these issues go to more fully legitimizing the place of environmental uses of water within the legal framework governing the allocation and use of western water resources. There is a growing recognition that water serves a large number of valuable functions as it moves within the hydrologic cycle. In a very real sense water that is removed from the hydrologic cycle is simply being reallocated to some other function believed by the one removing the water to be more valuable or important than the functions provided by in-place uses of water. Water law can be understood as the rules by which reallocation of water out of the hydrologic cycle is permitted. Unfortunately most such reallocation decisions were made with little or no regard for the in-place benefits of water. Particularly in the western United States the legacy of this disregard is increasingly apparent. 1-15