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L - market solutions; and inappropriate to leave wholly to private decisionmaking. Thus, we have employed administrative agencies to refine some nuances of, and enforce, the public interest. The field of water policy has lagged behind in these devel- opments. In Colorado, the State Engineer's Office acts as a distribution agency whose main duty is to allocate water precise- ly in accordance with the provisions of judicial decrees, even though those judicial decrees typically allow waste of water. To be sure, this state has developed a progressive law providing for instream flows. But the law was not enacted until 1973, so that any rights under it are junior to the tens of thousands of established vested rights. The emerging policy of wildlife miti- gation applies only to new uses. Seniority continues to rule on nearly every stream in the state. Deep reform cannot occur unless senior rights are included. Thus, water officials serve as administrators of existing property rights, not as planners or managers of natural resources. There is, of course, considerable irony in this. We have become used to strict regulation of uses of land, but the vested interests have succeeded in blocking regulation of water even though the effects of water use are even more pervasive than the effects of land use, because downstream uses can be affected literally hundreds of miles away. Nevertheless, we are in a new time for Colorado water and state water officials and legislators should continue, in a serious way, their current earnest process of reassessment. A -12-