Meese's Last Act
(Page 2 of 3)
January/February 1989
By Tom Turner
Meese, not for the first time, was on shaky legal ground. He took refuge behind the excuse often thrown up by people who want to pander to selfish local interests: The states should be left to decide whether to provide water for federal wildernesses.
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This is wholly unsatisfactory, of course, since the lands in question are the property of the federal government—they belong equally to all citizens of the republic, in other words—and the states have often been unblushing in placing commercial development above just about everything else. Clearly, a free-flowing river's best chance to stay damfree in water-hungry Utah or Nevada or Colorado or Arizona is under the wing of the federal government.
This somewhat abstract issue is playing out in a very concrete fashion at present in a Utah courtroom. There, an adjudication is being conducted over the Virgin River, whose several tributaries rise within or just outside Zion National Park in southwestern Utah. These tributaries flow through the park, join just beyond the park's southern boundary, clip off a corner of Arizona and then disappear into Lake Mead in Nevada.
On its way across Arizona, the Virgin flows through the Beaver Dam Mountains Wilderness, which lies within the Paiute Primitive Area and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
The adjudication has been under way for many months, but it stalled for a time as the various parties sitting around the table to divide up the river's flow awaited the federal government's claim for water from the river to support the park and the wilderness. In late summer, 1988, the government announced it would claim for Zion as much water as is needed for "park purposes," which will most likely protect the park adequately, assuming the government follows through. There's been no word yet with respect to the wilderness area, but the Meese policy suggests that the government will claim not a drop.
A wriggly problem has presented itself recently to the Department of the Interior, however: an endangered small fish called the woundfin minnow. Small populations of the fish live in the Virgin, both up- and downstream from the wilderness. Larry Silver of the Legal Defense Fund has recently written to Secretary of the Interior Donald Hodel, pointing out this situation and warning Hodel that if the department doesn't act to secure enough water to ensure the survival and recovery of the fish, he will be in violation of the Endangered Species Act. A suit is all but certain to follow. Stay tuned.
