|
QUESTIONS FOLLOWING
<br />"JUDICIAL, PUBLIC AWARENESS,
<br />AND EDUCATIONAL"
<br />2-By Barry Saunders, Utah Division of Water Resources, Salt
<br />Lake City, Utah:
<br />I've got a quickie for Jeff. When you said that in the new
<br />instream flow law, two agencies could hold a water right you
<br />said one of them was the Division of Water Resources. Did you
<br />mean the Division of Wildlife Resources?
<br />A-(Jeff Appel) That's precisely what I meant. Yes. Sorry
<br />2-By Stephanie Lake, Attorney for the Law and Water Fund,
<br />pro Bono, Phoenix, Arizona:
<br />I want to just touch on something that Jeff said which is f you
<br />need a water lawyer or you need a lawyer to look at some issues,
<br />the Law and Water Fund in Boulder, Colorado can find
<br />somebody for you. Give us a call.
<br />Q-By Chuck Coiner, Twin Falls Canal Co., Twin Falls, Idaho:
<br />I don't know if I have a question as much as a statement. In
<br />your statistics therefor recreation, just a little different way of
<br />looking at it. This nation historically has had a cheap food policy,
<br />and you people pay something like 17 or 18% of your disposable
<br />income for food. Other places in the world spend 50 to 60 to
<br />70% of their disposable income for food. And with only spending
<br />17% of your livelihood there to go to feed yourselves, you have a
<br />lot of money left over to fish, to recreate, to go around, to kayak,
<br />to do all these things. And I might say just a different slant of it is
<br />that you're all being subsidized by agriculture. Thank you.
<br />A-(Jeff Appel) I think there's another message in there
<br />too, and it was one of the purposes that we utilize this
<br />particular tool in the course of negotiations on the legisla-
<br />tive task force. And that was to show, and you don't really
<br />know this unless you're from Utah, but many of those
<br />particular industries are subsidized greatly by the state of
<br />Utah, for instance skiing. And I guess the question that
<br />raises is if you were to add instream flow or at least get
<br />some states to support, not even necessarily a subsidy, what
<br />could you do? What sort of boost to the economy would
<br />that be? That was a statement too.
<br />Q-By Tim DeYoung, Modrall, Sperling, Roehl, Harris & Sisk,
<br />Albuquerque, New Mexico:
<br />I just had a question about the empirical base. What is the real
<br />threat of increased diversions on instream flow segments? And I
<br />say that knowing that in New Mexico and a lot of other western
<br />states instream flows are protected perhaps in a de facto fashion,
<br />because they are below dams or they're on federal reservations,
<br />national forests, so forth. So, maybe in Utah you could look at
<br />particular segments other than the Green. How much instream
<br />flow is there to protect? How much is that threat?
<br />A-(Jeff Appel) I'm trying to think if there's a way to
<br />answer that other than to refer you to the Division of
<br />Wildlife Resources. At the beginning of our task force, we
<br />put a map up on the wall, and one of the intentions was to
<br />at least try to identify stream reaches that could benefit by,
<br />depending on the threshold that you take, increased flow of
<br />some nature. Would it do any good? In some streams, it
<br />won't do any good, because they're gong to be dry anyhow.
<br />In other streams, you might be able to get increased
<br />productivity 25 or 30% as productivity of fish and other
<br />river resources just by 2 or 3 cfs. And we have not done
<br />that. I guess the answer is that we really haven't done it. But
<br />the DWR might have a better handle on that than we do.
<br />. A-(John Hill) Let me comment on that. I wouldn't
<br />necessarily agree that there are not threats to instream flow
<br />segments in the national forests. There's not any yet clearly
<br />defined statutory authority the Forest Service has to
<br />maintain instream flows, at least not as a water right. It has
<br />its permitting authorities, but it certainly has a lot of
<br />pressure on it to grant permits for diversions on the
<br />national forest. Indeed, that's one of the purposes of the
<br />national forest. So, I wouldn't make that assumption.
<br />Q-By Angus Duncan, Northwest Power Planning Council,
<br />Portland, Oregon:
<br />While I'm sympathetic as for Mr. DeYoung while I'm
<br />sympathetic where this kind of analysis is trying to go, I'm also a
<br />little troubled by it in a couple of respects. One is that it tends to
<br />come of as attack on agriculture and ultimately an attack on
<br />farmers and just on a political and pragmatic basis it tends to,
<br />you know, set the hairs standing straight up on the backs of
<br />people's necks. It tends to be a whole lot harder to move from one
<br />way of doing business to another, if you have started out by
<br />polarizing the debate. I also have a problem, I guess, with the
<br />way this analysis separates out agricultural use of a particular
<br />resource a consumptive use of a resource and somehow implies
<br />that that's different from what we do in other parts of the
<br />economy. I come from a part of the world where frequently
<br />aluminum companies get singled out because they use not an
<br />enormous amount of water, or at least not directly they use an
<br />enormous amount of electricity. And there are always
<br />comparisons between the amount of employment they provide
<br />and the amount of the electricity that they use. But if we but just
<br />about every resource-based activity uses one resource or another
<br />disproportionately and as far as that goes a lot of other
<br />30
|