BOARD02567

• Board Meeting Date: 1/24/2001
• Description: CWCB Director's Report
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

Bureau of Reclamation, Lower Colorado Regional Office
Remarks by Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt
Colorado River Water Users Association Meeting
Las Vegas, Nevada
December 14,2000

I am pleased to join you for the sixth consecutive year to review our progress on water issues in the Colorado River
Basin. As this will be my final appearance as Secretary of the Interior, I want to begin by thanking you for the
opportunity to work with you over the past eight years. I want especially to acknowledge the indispensable assistance of
the water buffaloes here in the Interior Department who have traveled with me since the very beginning - Bob Johnson,
Charlie Calhoun, and John Leshy and his staff in the Solicitor's Office. I have also benefited greatly from Professor Joe
Sax's wise counsel over most of these years.

The extraordinary number of issues that we have worked on, and the many that we have brought to completion, marks
this as the most intensive decade of change and transition in nearly a half century - at least since the momentous decade
that led up to passage ofthe Colorado River Basin Project Act in 1968. The reasons are easy to discern. In the decades
after 1968 our energies were directed to the build-out of infrastructure, the storage and diversion facilities necessary for
all basin states to put their river entitlements to beneficial use. Within the last decade of the 20'h century, however, we
have moved from pouring concrete to building the institutions and partnerships necessary to efficiently manage this great
river system.

And at the outset, I want to say that I am particularly proud of the way we have continually widened the circle of
consultation and management to include full participation by tribal governments and to integrate environmental laws and
policies into river management. Most recently we have begun to reach across the international border to work with our
counterparts in Mexico who are also concerned about the Delta. And as the circle expands we have forged a series of
working partnerships among traditional rivals, coming together to find mutually agreed upon solutions to long-standing
problems without resorting to litigation.

In my remarks today I would like to review our progress over the past eight years and then suggest areas that will need
your continuing attention well beyond my tenure in this office.

Tribal Governments: I take great satisfaction in the way we have, in recent years, brought tribal governments into the
mainstream of Colorado River Basin policy and administration. Prior to Arizona v. California, tribal governments were
relegated to watching from the sidelines as other parties negotiated. Then in the 1970s Arizona, under the leadership of
the late Mo Udall, took the lead in working out negotiated water settlements for confirmation and enactment by the
Congress. Those early efforts, along with the pioneering leadership of the Ten Tribes Partnership and many individual
tribal leaders, have flowered into a new era of consultation on matters affecting the river and a long string of negotiated
settlements.

As I speak the Congress is at the threshold of approving the Colorado Ute Settlement Act Amendments, arrived at
through lengthy negotiations among the Department, the Ute tribal governments and other stakeholders. This legislation
will enable us to at last meet the commitments to the Ute tribes made by the United States long ago.

The Ute Settlement amendments reflect several important aspects of administration policy that should continue to guide
our efforts throughout this Basin in coming years. First, we have achieved full environmental compliance under the
Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, and we have a much better program as a result.
Second, the Act also meets our Indian obligation without larding on costly, environmentally destructive expansion of
non-Indian agricultural entitlements. I want to express my gratitude to the Ute tribes for their patience and flexibility, to
the communities of southwest Colorado, who supported the project amendments in recognition of the benefits that will
accrue for the entire region, and to the Governor, Attorney General Salazar, the Colorado delegation and the Colorado
legislature.

In California, we have negotiated a final settlement to provide a permanent water supply to the San Luis Rey Bands of
Indians as authorized by Congress in 1988. The key to this settlement was water to be saved from lining the All
American Canal, made possible by the cooperation of the hnperial Irrigation District, the Coachella Valley Irrigation
District, the Metropolitan Water District, and the California Legislature. The water allocation agreement that we forged

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