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<br />An Overview of the Basin's Resource-Management Problems <br /> <br />American economy. But they also apply to groups who generally are <br />considered part of the mainstream, including ranchers and farmers seeking <br />to maintain a way oflife they and their families have pursued for decades, as <br />well as resource-conservationists seeking to arrest and reverse the adverse <br />consequences that way oflife imposes on the environment. <br /> <br />,~" <br /> <br />Resources will continue to be inefficiently allocated to commodity uses as <br />long as most of the rules, laws, and institutions governing the Basin's water <br />and related resources implicitly or explicitly favor commodity-related <br />demands for these resources over other demands. There are many examples <br />of laws and institutions with commodity biases. Virtually all of the reports <br />from the federal, state, and local agencies responsible for managing the <br />Basin's water focus solely on commodity uses of the water or mention <br />non-commodity uses as an afterthought. The majority of all ofthe responses <br />by the agencies' staff to our questions about their perceptions of the problems <br />associated with the growing competition for the Basin's scarce water and <br />related resources had a similar character. <br /> <br />~-' <br /> <br />;z <br /> <br />, <br /> <br />The existence ofthe three agencies that have the greatest control over <br />resources in the Basin-Bureau of Reclamation (BuRec), Army Corps of <br />Engineers (CoE), and Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD)- <br />stems from construction projects oriented toward commodity uses of water <br />and their current activities that are organized around the operation and <br />maintenance of these projects. They continue to operate their major dams <br />and reservoirs according to rules set as far back as 1916 (see Table 3.1), even <br />though ecological conditions have changed dramatically since then (Crawford <br />et a!. 1993a). Although there have been important efforts in recent years to <br />the contrary, these agencies' overall operations continue to be highly oriented <br />toward commodity uses and to downplay the non-commodity values <br />described above. <br /> <br />I <br /> <br />, <br />.,., <br /> <br />:r~ <br />b' <br /> <br />~, <br />f; <br /> <br />There undoubtedly are many reasons for the fixation with commodity uses, <br />but one of the most important seems to be this: water and food are essential <br />to human life. The agencies' behavior suggests that, to a great extent, they <br />have taken this irrefutable truth and concluded that human consumption <br />and agriculture must have the highest priority for all water in the Basin. <br />The merits ofthis conclusion are refutable. Without doubt, humans give <br />supreme value to ensuring that their basic needs for water and food are met, <br />but once they are, then the benefits of allocating more water to human <br /> <br />ri~r:G" <br />,_' ,~) G ",1 ..,) <br /> <br />83 <br />