The rhetoric of water reform resistance: a response to Hobbs' critique of Long's Peak.

Summary

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Response to article by Gregory J. Hobbs, Jr. in this issue, p. 157 - Long's Peak Report: Reforming National Water Policy

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Extract

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The rhetoric of water reform resistance: a response to Hobbs' critique of Long's Peak.

Greg Hobbs is an unusual talent. Both practitioner and scholar,(1) he is also an able and entertaining speaker, even if you do not agree with his perspective.(2)

Unfortunately, Hobbs' critique of the Long's Peak report(3) is not up to his usual standards. Instead, it is a hyperbolic and bombastic attack on a well-reasoned, moderate call for evolutionary change in water allocation, a system largely grounded in the ideas of the Nineteenth Century. For some reason, defenders of the water law status quo seem to feel that mischaracterization and overstatement is a better defense to calls for reform(4) than reasoned discussion of the deficiencies of a system of water allocation which shortchanges latecomers, instream uses, and Indian tribes.(5)

Hobbs' attempt to indict the Long's Peak report as advocacy of "an imaginary Western wilderness" and "a one-dimensional argument for the exercise of federal agency power"(6) is easily refuted by a reading of the report itself, which the editors have been good enough to reprint in these pages.(7) Nowhere in the report's 47 recommendations is there anything remotely resembling a call for more wilderness or new federal authority over water management. Instead, the Long's Peak report is an appeal to the federal government to exercise authority it already possesses to increase efficiency, fairness, and environmental sensitivity in water use decision making. Hobbs does recognize the report's "timely message" about the need for efficiency, environmental protection, community participation, and market principles.(8) But his critique largely ignores these necessary reforms in an effort to characterize the report as a "strident preservationism."(9)

I want to use this space to attempt to identify the nature of Hobbs' objections to the Long's Peak report,(10) for his criticism reflects the deep divisions in the West over water use as we near the twenty-first century. He indicts the Long's Peak report for being anti-use, anti-storage, and anti-local.(11) Because it is necessary to understand what he means by each of these allegations in order to comprehend the nature ...

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