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<br />WILLIAM T. DA VOREN <br /> <br />people present represented States. <br /> <br />3. I think it is clear that there must be a "Big Two" in the future of Western water development <br />_ the Federal government and State governments. This is already spelled out loud and clear in <br />recent national water legislation. I refer particularly to PL89-80 - the Water Resources Plan- <br />ning Act - and to the new water quality legislation. You see the same trend in the legislation <br />administered by the Office of Water Resources Research and the Bureau of Outdoor Recrea- <br />tion. <br /> <br />This is so obvious you may ask yourselves why I am calling attention to it. The reason is that I <br />firmly believe that most State Legislatures in our region have not yet been impressed enough <br />with the money and manpower needs of their own water and resource agencies. <br /> <br />For instance, it doesn't take much money, really, for a State to play in the Framework study <br />ball game - at least not much when compared to the total State budgets for all purposes, and <br />to the total Federal investment in these studies. Some States - - Wyoming, Colorado and Utah <br />are the best examples in our region - - have to keep up with this new era of cooperative plan- <br />ning in several major river basins, and this is difficult. Their water and resource agencies cannot <br />afford to be left out of this work, yet present budgets do not afford them the opportunity to <br />do a really adequate job of representing their States interests. Wyoming has the most bases to <br />cover - - a commission on its Columbia drainage and Framework studies on the Colorado and <br />Missouri. Incidentally, Wyoming is getting going with a State water planning approach to meet <br />this situation and to profit from the studies. Wyoming may show what a so-called "small" <br />State can do. I certainly hope so. <br /> <br />4. The blending of Federal and State interests in the Framework study is fascinating to observe. <br />It has come a long way in the one year we have been working together. Anyone who has <br />doubts about this can read the letter that PSIAC approved Wednesday, here in Las Vegas, <br />criticizing the Water Resources Council's draft for the first national assissment. <br /> <br />The relationships among the Federal agencies themselves have improved greatly, too. You <br />might say we have moved from a kind of collective uneasiness to a condition of nervous <br />friendship. Four more years at this rate and we'll wind this study up as a mutual admiration <br />society. <br /> <br />5. Our region's water: policies have grown out of the needs for specific projects at specific loca- <br />tions for specific purposes at different time stages in our development. We, pragmatically, have <br />been "project oriented." No one need apologize for this, and I am not criticising any individ- <br />ual, state or agency. That is our history, in my view. Other regions are breaking away from <br />the project-by-project approach. We can, too, and the Framework studies are a step in this dir- <br />ection. <br /> <br /> <br />6. Another interesting aspect of our region, and of its geopolitics, is that it shares hundreds of <br />miles of boundary with another nation, the Republic of Mexico. In our concentration on our <br />own problems, we tend to overlook this. It cannot be overlooked anymore. <br /> <br />The Pacific Southwest is no longer Daniel Webster's "Vast worthless area"; people, millions of <br />them now, and time, have changed all that. <br /> <br />They have also changed our water politics to geopolitics. It's time we started looking at our- <br />selves in the light of this new world we live in - - and not in the light of that mythical world <br />built on the prejudices, promises and lost projects of the past. <br /> <br />Thank you. <br /> <br />-36- <br />