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<br />the lack of need for the water. If your need is within limits, you <br />will fulfill that need, but as Jim just said, we have not been able <br />to find a need. No one is going to pay for something that they do not <br />need. <br /> <br />Question: This is off the subject that we have been discussing, and <br />I realize that it points to what is been scheduled for tomorrow. <br />However, I would like for Ms. Potter to comment. It seems to me that <br />much of the litigation of, not only the Sierra Club, but the entire <br />environmental community is on water projects. The net result seems <br />to be water running out of the state and into the Lower Basin. Are <br />there not endangered species below the Imperial Canal, or is it just <br />coincidence that the emphasis of the Endangered Species Act seems to <br />focus on the Upper Basin with the result that water goes to the Lower <br />Basin? <br /> <br />Lori Potter: I know that there are a great number of endangered <br />species in California. Some very controversial ones were the source <br />of the Wall Street Journal article calling for the repeal of the Act. <br />I think that you chose to bring the debate to the use of the Act for <br />what you might consider an improper purpose. However, I would submit <br />that the Act, which was passed by Congress, is being used for the very <br />purpose it was intended. That purpose is to protect the availability <br />of a broad genetic pool, and to protect our heritage from the past for <br />its possible use in the future. The Act is applied wherever those <br />species are found. We naturally hear more about those species in our <br />part of the world, but endangered fish, for example, are found <br />throughout the Colorado River Basin. The Act applies to them and <br />protects them equally wherever they are found. <br /> <br />Question: I have a concern, rather than a question. We are here <br />discussing water and the problems associated with water. It does not <br />seem to me, by looking over the agenda, that we are addressing the <br />fundamental problem, which creates the problems of water -- that is <br />people. I read an article recently that said the population trend <br />would not reach zero growth for 104 years, and by that time there <br />would be slightly more than the double the current population. My <br />concern is that regardless how much we address water, until we deal <br />with population on an equal basis it is a feudal effort. I think that <br />everyone needs to give that some thought. We can try to save pristine <br />streams and wilderness areas, but until we solve the population <br />problem we are not going to preserve the environment for the long <br />term. I live on a ranch, and in my opinion, that environment is <br />better than the one in downtown Denver. I do not think that ranch is <br />going to be protected, or the environment is going to be protected <br />until we can deal with the population. <br /> <br />Lori Potter: I have to agree and would like to recall the words of <br />Bruce..Babbitt, who, since leaving the governorship of Arizona, has <br />taken a very radical and controversial view on this very issue. He <br />speaks of some of the small towns created in the mining boom years, <br />which are now virtually ghost towns. 'He speaks of them as "wretched <br />little places that have no reason to exist." His point is that many <br />of the locations of cities and small towns of the southwest are more <br /> <br />39 <br />