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ENVIRONMENT ON THE COLORADO RIVER Bv ELLIS l. ARMSTRONG, Commissioner U. S. Bureau o-f Reclamation, Washington, D. C. When I was first considered for appointment as the Commissioner of Reclamation, the inevitable geographical question came up, Since I was located in the Region 4 office and was a native of Utah, did this automatically make me an Upper Basin advocate? Well, I want to tell you that if the Upper and Lower Basins had jointly sought someone who was close to both regions, they could not have come any closer, I was born in Cedar City, Utah, which is in the Great Basin but only a few miles from the divide of the Virgin River drainage, which is in the Lower Colorado River Basin, As a matter of fact, I spent much of my childhood on my grand, father's farm which is only 3 miles from that divide, And of course, only a few miles farther east, you get into the Paria River watershed which flows into the Colorado just above the dividing line at Lee Ferry. But seriously, I hope no one will attempt to identify me as from either the Upper or Lower Basin or, for that matter, as an advocate solely of the Colorado River Basin, I assure you I am an advocate of the Basin but I am also an advocate of development throughout all of the West, If the task of water development and utilization is to go forward on schedule to meet foreseeable needs, we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of sectionalism. I realize, of course, that there are intra,basin and inter-basin problems which are of great concern, We must bend our minds to their clarification. We must take the long view and speak with a united front in behalf of the vital needs for western water development while negotiating among ourselves on anY'program differences. This morning I want to talk not about difficulties but about a challenge which involves us all, here on the Colorado and elsewhere, It is the challenge of our environment, With our smoggy air, our folluted water, our eroded and denuded land, and our decaying cities, environmental quality is an al important emotional subject. The public is somewhat inclined to accept the thesis that everything man has done has degraded the environment and that if we would just get off the earth, it would again be a land of milk and honey, I must disagree with this thesis on two counts: One, the West was not a land of milk and honey until man put water on the land; and two, I for one am not about to get off the earth, not if I can help it, I like it here despite the problems of our day and intend to do what I can within my particular sphere of activity to make it a better place to live, As for the Colorado River, man put his imprint on it from the Hrst visits by the early explorers and pioneers of America, They looked upon it as a barrier and could see no good in it, Indeed, as late as 1857, Lt. Ives reported from a steamboat exploration up the Colorado to the arproximate location of Hoover Dam that "ours was the Hrst and doubtless will be the last party 0 whites to visit this profitless locality. It seems intended by nature that the Colorado River along the great portion of its lone and majestic way shall be forever unvisited and unmolested," And' until Hoover Dam was built, the Colorado remained man's master even though there had been some uncertain efforts to put the river to use. Nature's regime on the river was adapted by that and other major control structures to make the river a useful servant of man. When Hoover Dam was on the drawing boards, terms like ecosystems and environmental quality existed only in ivory towers and in the minds of a few visionaries. If anyone on the Lower Colorado thought in nature's terms in those days, it was, I am sure, in terms of the hostile natural environment of flood and drouth. The river had to be tamed and put to man's use instead of causing devastation. -3,