Water 2025: Preventing Crises and Conflict in the West

• Description: Water 2025: Preventing Crises and Conflict in the West
• State: CO
• Date: 5/5/2003
• Title: Water 2025: Preventing Crises and Conflict in the West
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Meeting

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Water 2025.
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Water is the lifeblood of the American
West and the foundation of its economy.
More than a century ago, American
pioneers began harnessing the water of the
West, opening vast new lands for
settlement and development. Today, the
American West is the fastest growing
region of the country. Water is its scarcest
resource.
Water 2025 is intended to focus attention
on the reality that explosive population
growth in western urban areas, the
emerging need for water for environmental
and recreational uses, and the national
importance of the domestic production of
food and fiber from western farms and
ranches are driving major conflicts between
these competing uses of water.
Today, in some areas of the
West, existing water supplies
are, or will be, inadequate to
meet the water demands of
people, cities, farms, and the
environment even under normal
water supply conditions.
Water 2025 recognizes that state and local
governments should have a leading role in
meeting these challenges, and that the
Department of the Interior should focus its
attention -and existing resources on areas
where scarce federal dollars can provide
the greatest benefits to the West and the
rest of the Nation.
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