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Wigington's and Pontius's paper show the many unknowns that are tolerated to allow commitments to be made while there are major fundamental unan- swered questions about endangered species. For instance, in the lower basin endangered species pro- grams' memorandum of agreement we have not defined the ecosystem of the species in question is, nor have we defined "recovery:' And Ken Maxey warns that we may be on the verge of sacrificing "two-thirds of the operational capacity of Glen Canyon Dam in exchange for nebulous benefits to endangered fish....." COMPETITION RATHER THAN COOPERATION No feature of Colorado River Basin history is better known than our legendary battles with one another. I have traveled to Europe and Central Asia and found water experts there who know anecdotes of our Colorado River wars. Political competition among the states motivated the compact. The negotiations that preceded Thanksgiving Day, 1922 were not cozy family affair, full of trust and good will. Only Herbert Hoover's Solomonic idea of dividing the river in two was able to produce agree- ment on anything. And then Arizona held out for decades. This state's resistance was so entrenched that it once mobilized the National Guard against the incur- sions of California's Davis Dam on the shores of Arizona. The epic fight in the landmark Arizona v. California still bristles from the pages of the Supreme Court Reports. There are four major Supreme Court deci- sions in litigation spread over half a century. Fights for federal money to build projects occupied the states when they weren't in court. Hard-ball politics saw California and Arizona alternately fighting against one another's development plans as it did the upper basin and lower basin scrapping about their piece of the pie. Ultimately, tenuous alliances were reached among states in an aura of mutual suspicion, just long enough to get agreement to legislation loaded with enough pork to justify an alliance of convenience. Litigation and negotiation of Indian water rights did not catch fire until fifty or sixty years after the com- pact, which merely nodded toward the existence of those rights. These significant battles were repressed until most of the basin's water was developed and divided up by non-Indians. Today the focal point of contention over the river's water is between urban and rural interests. All of the papers for this workshop suggest the tension created as growing cities covet the copious supplies of water allo- cated to agriculture. Over all, the imagery suggested by Sarah Bates' descrip- tion in Searching Out the Headwaters of "a pack of thirsty dogs all pulling on a wet towel, each gaining a few drops to slake its thirst but growing more famished with the effort of defeating the others;' is apt. Every use of the Colorado potentially detracts from another. This point is made by Carothers and House and by MacDonnell and Driver. Even if only consumptive uses are considered, Rod Smith shows in his paper that the river will soon - in the lifetimes of most of us here - be fully used. But we need not continue in this competitive mentali- ty. It is not necessarily a zero sum game. Aren't there solutions that can leave some interests and areas better off and others no worse off? Economists certainty urge that there are. How do we find solutions? 13