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FOREWORD I am pleased to transmit the final report of the Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission. We were fortunate in having a dedicated staff, whose names are listed here, who carried this process through on a tight schedule. The work of this Commission also demanded much from the citizen commission members and the Congressional and agency staff members. Thanks are due to the commission members who devoted themselves to serving our government by attending meetings and reviewing reams of reports and drafts. Additionally, we deeply appreciate the contributions made to the Commission report by writers and researchers. The members of the public who took time to attend meetings, prepare testimony, and review drafts have enriched this report and have also shown that the West is capable of robust, yet respectful dialogue. This dialogue, which we hope our report will further, is where the future will be shaped. This report provides a good overview of the status of the West's water and of the pressures that require change in our water management practices. Foremost is that the West is a maguet for population growth; a transformative fact that has affected every aspect of western life. Water policies have already begun to change in response to growth and the changing economy, but more needs to be done. We need to consider how to keep agriculture productive, while acknowledging that healthy riparian and aquatic ecosystems are also critical to the long term sustainability of the West. Growing cities need water, but water marketing makes many westerners uneasy. Tribal water needs often have been neglected, despite the legal and moral obligations that underpin them. Critics deride the federal government as having too many agencies dealing with water issues and charge that disorganization and poor coordination has resulted. No single solution was identified in this report for these complex challenges, but our central recommendation is that the federal government must support watershed and basin innovation. Watershed and basin management are part of a shift towards stakeholder involvement and coordination of agencies, along hydrologic rather than political lines. This shift will take different forms across the West but will ease the difficulties caused by a proliferation of federal agencies and help the West address the many legitimate interests in water management. This is not a recipe for the creation of federal commissions in each basin; rather, it endorses the integration of federal programs at the watershed and basin level. Federal policies also must change in how we address tribal rights, aquatic ecosystem degradation, land use, protection of farming and ranching communities, and other critical areas. These recommendations are explicitly made within a framework of respecting existing property rights in water. The Commission was charged with a comprehensive review of Federal activities in the western states which affect the use and allocation of water, and the review of numerous aspects of water resources, management, institutional and legal matters, and the performance of federal agencies. We did so through meetings with the public, research, and symposia, and the assistance of experts. I am especially proud of the research reports prepared for the Commission in which experts provided their appraisals of difficult water-related problems. Their research is now published and available. The basin studies that were prepared for the Commission present an incisive overview of how all of the elements listed in the statute play out in a basin and attempt to capture the interrelationship of these factors. They are not dry policy studies but are firmly anchored in the realities of particular places.