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TH RE ATS T O PAR K WAT E RS he reason park waters are in jeopardy is simple: most park waters are inseparably linked to watersheds and natural systems that transcend park boundaries. Our use and abuse of water outside the parks is inevitably transmitted to the waters essential in our parks. Disregarding that simple truth threatens the very essence of our parks; and, like barometers of national environmental health, our threatened parks also forecast heavy weather for us all unless solutions are found. The following synopsis identifies major threats to park waters and cites examples from the park case studies included in this Report. WATER QUANTITY As our population and its economic demands have grown, so has our society's demand for water. Increasingly, proposals to divert or withdraw water have begun to focus on the rivers, streams and aquifers that flow into or under our national parks. Dams proposed upstream of parks to serve municipal, hydropower, irrigation, industrial, flood control and other purposes threaten to fundamentally alter and degrade important park ecosystems. ^ Dams are proposed just above the boundary of Zion National Park on both forks of the Virgin River, the life-giving, landscape-carving force of the park. ^ Several dams proposed upstream of Dinosaur National Monument would arrest the Yampa River, the last major free-flowing tributary of the Colorado River, and home to four species of endangered fish. Other diversions upstream of parks have harmed, or threaten to degrade, our parks. ^ The construction of dikes, canals and reten- tion areas north of Everglades National Park to serve agricultural and urban development has devastated the park's water-dependent wildlife, and has flushed nutrient-polluted waters into the park, stimulating invasion of exotic plant species destructive to the native sawgrass ecosystem. The production of hydroelectric power, especially "peaking power" - at dams upstream, downstream and within our parks -has wreaked havoc on river ecology, extirpating endangered and other important species, and degrading aesthetic and recreational val- ues. ^ Operation of the Flaming Gorge Dam on the Green River upstream of Dinosaur National Monument has caused dramatic fluctuations in river levels, altering the basic ecology of the river, damag- ing native fish habitat, altering riverbank and 3 0 0 Demands to use all available water for expanding populations, industry and agriculture, increasingly threaten park waters, espe- cially in the arid West.