7913

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 7913
• Author: Freshwater Society.
• Title: Water Management in Transition, 1985.
• USFW Year: 1985.
• USFW - Doc Type: Navarre, MN.
• Copyright Material: YES

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Wstem Management Innovations

The ability of the western states to accommodate changes in water use is
being demonstrated on a daily basis. These approaches will expand and
multiply as the states continue to improve their ability to manage their
own water resources.

These approaches will
expand and multiply as the
states continue to improve
their ability to manage their
own water resources.

· Alaska and Wyoming have developed bold new approaches for state
financing of water projects.
· In Arizona, Governor Babbitt, witnessing increased competition for
water among cities, farmers and miners, led negotiations which resulted
in Arizona's Groundwater Management Act, the most comprehensive
groundwater code in the nation.
· California has one of the most advanced water conservation programs
in the nation.
· Governor Lamm of Colorado, tired of perennial disputes over water
between the eastern and western slopes, instituted the Metropolitan
Water Roundtable, which is negotiating a series of key trade-offs.
· Hawaii is testing a process for purifying impaired-quality groundwater
after it has been pumped.
· In Idaho, Governor Evans has encouraged the Department of Water
Resources to develop a number of innovative financing mechanisms
to implement the state's water plan.
· Montana has established a Reserved Water Rights Compact Commission
to address the state's Indian and other water rights disputes.
· Nebraska, in cooperation with neighboring High Plains states, is
developing common strategies for protecting the Ogallala Aquifer.
· Nevada has enacted a comprehensive groundwater law which assures
protection of existing rights while allowing reasonable use for new
demands within the limitations of water quantities available.
· New Mexico is taking the lead in studying ways a state can preserve
its groundwater, ranging from federal legislation to state appropriation
of unappropriated groundwater.
· North Dakota has undertaken an extensive wetlands and wildlife
enhancement program as part of the Garrison Project.
· Oregon, Texas and Utah have active and effective loan programs to assist
local governments in water development projects.
· In South Dakota, Governor ]anklow agreed to sell Missouri River water
for a coal slurry pipeline in order to raise revenues to finance water
development so that the state could capture some benefit from its
unused water rights. Although, for economic reasons, the pipeline
project is no longer being considered, its benefits would have included
construction by the slurry pipeline company of a water pipeline to
deliver water to western communities in the state.
· Washington, in its Yakima River Basin Enhancement Project, is tapping
experts nationwide to develop non-structural conservation measures.

Repri nted from New Challenge, New Direction: The Water Policy Report of the Western Governors' Association,
by Jo Clark and Jim Maddy, with permission of the Western Governors' Association,

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