Western Instream Flows: Fifty Years of Progress and Setbacks.

• Author: Watts, Courtney
• Position: SYMPOSIUM

Lewis & Clark Law School continues its celebration of the bicentennial of the Corps of Discovery's extraordinary journey, focusing this year on "Restoring the Rivers of Lewis & Clark." On April 20-21, 2006, at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon, the Oregon Law Institute and Lewis & Clark Law School hosted a symposium entitled "Western Instream Flows: 50 Years of Progress and Setbacks." This multi-faceted symposium brought together nationally renowned legal scholars as well as water resource managers, biologists, water policy advocates, tribal resource managers, and an audience of practicing attorneys and visiting professors. This edition of Environmental Law is rooted in that symposium and explores western water law as it applies to conservation efforts and the public interest in flowing rivers.

The rivers of the West have changed dramatically since the Lewis and Clark expedition made its way to the Oregon coast. As ever-growing populations in the and West continually increase demand for water, our rivers have been dammed, diverted, and drained to meet the needs of cities, agriculture, ranching, and industry. Water alone, however, is not the only resource in rivers and streams. These waterbodies, the lifelines of the West, are of fundamental importance to natural ecosystems, as well as human cultural and recreational activities.

For fifty years, western water policy has struggled to find a place for ecosystem, cultural, and recreational instream uses within the doctrines of prior appropriation and beneficial use. This symposium, and its subsequent articles, examine the development of instream flow rights and obstacles to their implementation, the interplay of federal and tribal instream flow protection with state water law, and innovative approaches for the future of instream rights. Each author discusses the issue of instream rights from his or her area of specialty. Charles Wilkinson (1) provides a moving discussion of the importance of instream flows and the advocates who work to protect our rivers. Janet Neuman (2) traces the history of Oregon's instream flow protection legislation, and evaluates the failures, successes, and implications of Oregon's statutes both within and outside Oregon's borders. Michael Blumm, (3) David Becker, (4) and Joshua Smith (5) examine the efforts of six tribes to restore streamflows necessary to fulfill the purposes of their reservations, and the special problems tribes face by being forced to...