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Show Marga - If you want to get back into a significant side of the environmental effort, we need help in implementing the one, significant program the President has going: his national Water Policy. This is a reform of the way water is viewed: as unlimited, as cheap, as always available from surface streams, as pollutable. Guy Martin, Assistant Secretary Land and Water Resources, Dep't Interior, was given the job of pulling together Task Force Groups throughout the entire Federal government to develop guidelines for all Federal Agencies involved in water use - urban or rural - for implementing purposes of the Water Policy. Objectives are to preserve instream flows, aquatic and 4 terrestrial habitats associated with rivers, wetlands and floodplains, AV as well as the Quality of the nation*, waters.; The Task Force ^ ^Groups prepared detailed reports and each AgeTicy - including the Corps of Engineers and the BuRec, now called Water and Power Resources Service or "Woppers". ^ J ^ -1/ So, I am in the process of taking all this work seriously ^ VkT and am addressing every Draft EIS anywhere in the light of what is being addressed a la these Task Force Reports. When I got to Washington with my Instream Flow Agreement, an Agreement which apparently Fred Reimherr supported, but which I had picked to pieces on the basis of its failure to incorporate Task Force guideline$and criteria, Pete Carlson, aide to Brent Blackwelder, "read it and said it was one of the best analyses he had ever seen. And, so we used it - as part of my hearing statement and to hand f to Andrus. In other words, we have to challenge the Agencies Jf themselves to do what they have been directed by the President to do I Utah, like many western states, is fighting tooth and nail to preserve its ownership and prerogatives over water in the State. Ultimately, we will havt to change western water law, but can't do so directly. So, the Federal government sees opportunity to come at this problem through existing legislation (Clean Water Act, Corps 404 Dredge and Fill Permits, Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, etc.) as well as by means of Federal dollar contributions to State water programs. No cooperation! No dollar help! I consider this aspect of land and water use as important as has been the wilderness movement. But I think we have to make an enormous push to get things under way .. in case Carter is defeated and we get a John Connally in as Sec. of Interior. If you can be interested into taking on some of this work, especially in Utah, as an expert to guide conservationists who have not yet caught onto what we have to fight with, write to : John Cunningham Department of Interior Lands and Water Department Interior Bldg C St. at 18th, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20240 V <r> ,<&" A " \ ^ ^ ( and ask him to send you copies of the Draft and or Final Task Force Reports on the Water Policy. Don't specify any one. Take the whole bunch which ultimately cover any water reform attempts. |
