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OG15.J: 30. Robert Emmet Clark Page 4 ., am told that until we have more hydrological data and until we ha ve more precise knowledge which we should gain by research and by legislation that compels data collection, it is going to be very difficult to separate all these waters into different kinds. One of the glories of the appropriation system- -and I'm not saying this personally--one of the utilitarian aspects of it is that it lends itself to a system of unified control in the western states. You all must know that until about twenty ye ars ago most of the courts in the west were still talking about appropriation of surface flow and ~propriation of underground streams, but they were also talking about the English landowners' rule of unlim ited use with respect to percolating waters. There are only two states left in that category. One is the state of Texas, and we just talked about the modification which they themselves made since 1949, and the other state only by way of dictum in a case is the state of Montana. New Mexico- -and I'm not here to brag about New Mexico--I'm simply saying that New Mexico long since arrived at the con- clusion that the appropriation system, at least the vocabulary of the system, could be used to manage some kind of a unified system. Here, I th ink the people inte rested in legislat ion have to look to see the two choices open with respect to legislative changes. You can have loose controls to cover the whole state that aren't very good, or you can have specific controls set up in a legislative framework that covers specific areas where da a is available and where knowledge of its phys ical conditions exist. It seems to me that this is the choice for the Colorado legislature. The doctrine of reasonable use is a wonderful phrase--it sounds reasonable --but what kind of real reference does "reasonable use" have? vVhen it gets down to application, sometimes it refers to the fellow vho gets to the ditch first. deasonable use has to be defined in terms that can be administered by the water masters, by engineers, by people who are going to deal with the physical facts. So I would say here that any kind of good legislation has to recognize not just those institutional factors, but must have available scientific and technological data and all those other sources of information that we acquire over a period of time through study and research. , ~"', I would say that although I am not optimistic by nature, I feel that if this many people can get the benefit from two days of discussion in as many different fields of learning and understanding as have been gathered here, there is considerable hope for some kind of rational development in the field of unified control of all water resources. 'J Thank you very much.