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Show Glen Canyon is ideal for designation as an area of Outstanding National Resource Waters. The National Park Service would evaluate designation options available under the state water programs and prepare designation proposals in consultation with state officials. Such designations would require the approval of the NPS Rocky Mountain Regional Director and the state agencies responsible for the applicable water resource programs. • Additional research on water quality may be proposed to develop information in support of designations. Increased monitoring may be required in some areas as part of the designation process. This would most likely involve the measurement of additional parameters in samples already being collected for the park water quality monitoring program. Ill . B. Water Rights III. B. 1. Statement of the problem. Glen Canyon National Recreation Area is presently involved in the adjudication of water rights in two drainage basins in Utah. It is likely to be involved in the near future in similar proceedings in Arizona. These adjudicative proceedings determine the legal status and priority of claimants' water rights. During the adjudication of a drainage basin that includes parts of Glen Canyon NRA, the United States on behalf of NPS must file its claim for federal water rights within the recreation area. The McCarran Amendment ( Act of July 10, 1952; 66 Stat. 560) gave the consent of the United States to be joined as a defendant in any suit involving the general adjudication of water rights in river systems. When joined in such a proceeding, the United States must assert and defend its right to the use of water on lands administered by agencies such as the National Park Service. This right generally takes the form of either a Federal Reserved Water Right or a State Appropriated Water Right. The doctrines associated with these two kinds of water rights differ primarily in the way in which priority, the principal determinant of the right to first use, is assigned, and in the kinds of uses to which the water legitimately may be applied. Once adjudicated by the State, the water rights of the United States, reserved or appropriated, fit into the state priority system along with those of all other appropriators. In general, when it is brought into a general adjudication, the United States is given its only opportunity to assert its claim to water rights. Unless legally absent from the proceedings, it is generally understood that failure to assert a claim to water rights in such a proceeding may result in forfeiture of these rights. The scope of this problem is limited to water- related concerns of management, but it extends geographically and functionally throughout the NRA. Furthermore, the problem potentially can affect future management prerogatives and the expenditure of funds ( if acquisition of water rights should become necessary). The potential for resource 23 |