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Show CHAPTER EIGHT Water Resources FEDERAL LANDS are the source of most of the water in the 11 coterminous western states, providing approximately 61 percent of the total natural runoff occurring in the region. Most of this runoff comes from land withdrawn or reserved for specific purposes. Forest Service and National Park Service reservations contribute about 88 and 8 percent, respectively, of the runoff from public lands and more than 59 percent of the total yield from all lands of those states. Other public lands, such as the vast acreages administered by the Bureau of Land Management, do not contribute much to the overall yield of western streams, but are so situated that they influence water quality. The importance of the water yield from public lands to the economy, present and future, of the 11 western states is clear: Approximately $12.5 billion has been invested by public and private sources in water storage facilities, and additional billions have been invested to irrigate 23 million acres of land dependent in major part on public land water yields; about 96 percent of the region's 32 million people and most of its major cities and metropolitan areas are dependent in some degree on public land water; and the virtually entire hydroelectric capacity of 23.6 million kilowatts (as of 1968) is dependent upon water which originates on public lands. While water and land use problems are closely, almost inextricably, interwoven, this Commission is charged only with recommendations relative to public land policy.1 Therefore, we have confined our deliberations and recommendations to those significant water matters which have a direct relationship to public land policy. First, in the controversial field of Federal-state 1 The National Water Commission was created by Congress (Act of September 26, 1968, 82 Stat. 868) to study and make recommendations concerning broad national water policy problems, e.g., the Federal water resource development programs administered by the Bureau of Reclamation and the Corps of Engineers. water rights, the Commission has examined the legal basis for the use of surface and underground water on the public lands in connection with programs for the disposal or retention and management of the public lands. Attention has been focused on the implied reservation doctrine of Federal water rights, which is based on withdrawals of public domain lands from the operation of some or all of the public land laws. Second, we have reviewed the various watershed protection and management programs designed to regulate streamflow and maintain or improve its quality or, to a lesser degree, to increase water yield on the public lands. Third, we have considered whether due regard is given to impacts on public land resources and values in multi-purpose water project planning and operation. Fourth, we have given attention in our chapters on individual commodities and environmental policy to those public land programs which may have polluting effects on public land water, and have made recommendations concerning statutory and administrative policies designed to prevent or minimize such adverse effects. The Implied Reservation Doctrine of Federal Water Rights As successor to the sovereigns from which the United States obtained the vast areas of the western public domain, the Federal Government by the mid-19th century possessed complete power over the land and water of that region. Because the courts have settled the issue, there is little to be gained in academic arguments as to whether that power derives from concepts of "ownership" as distinguished from "sovereignty": the power is plenary, whatever its conceptual basis. 141 |