Environmental Management and the New Politics of Western Water: The Animas-La Plata Project and Implementation of the Endangered Species Act BRIAN A. ELLISON Master of Public Administration Program Southwest Missouri State University 901 South National Avenue Springfield, Missouri 65804, USA ABSTRACT / This paper explores the new politics of western water policy through an examination of the Animas-La Plata water project and implementation of the Endangered Spe- cies Act. It is suggested that the focus of western water pro- gramming has shifted from the source of distributed funds, the United States Congress, to the agencies originally cre- ated to deliver federal benefits because funding for new project construction has not been forthcoming. Under this new system, members of Congress continue to excite their constituents with promises of money for new project starts, while the administrative agencies perform the myriad duties needed to keep these projects alive. The result is that politi- cal objectives have replaced operational/management ob- jectives in administrative processes. In this case, the author demonstrates how resource managers in the Bureau of Rec- lamation manipulated hydrological analysis to control admin- istrative process, why their manipulation was unfair, and per- haps illegal, and why biologists from the US Fish and Wildlife Service accepted the analysis. While ostensibly protecting all interests, the result is that none of the objectives of federal water programming are achieved. Theories of distributive policy formulation have typically dominated discussions about the construction of western water projects in the American West. For the most part, the argument is that spending on western water projects reflects a political calculus designed to ensure particularistic benefits for farmers, municipali- ties, and power users and continuing reelection for congresspersons, while costs are broadly dispersed across the country. The strength of this system, often called an ‘‘iron triangle’’ or a subgovernment, lay in the ability of a few key western congresspersons to control the flow of authorizations and appropriations for western water projects (McCool 1994, Miller 1985, Mann 1975, Lowi 1979, Redford 1969, Freeman 1965, Maass 1951). By the 1980s, however, while Congress has autho- rized a few new projects, it has had difficulty appropriat- ing funds for new project construction (Beard 1993, US General Accounting Office 1983). Thus, the focus of the distributive water triangle has moved from the source of distributed funds, Congress, to the agencies originally created to distribute the benefits. Under this new system, congresspersons continue to excite their districts with promises of money for project starts, while the administrative agencies perform the myriad duties needed to keep these projects alive, such as updating environmental impact statements, performing due dili- gence on water rights, recomputing cost–benefit analy- ses, updating compliance with the Endangered Species Act, etc. There are several reasons why this shift in the politics of western water development has occurred. First, in the era of large federal budget deficits, it has been hard to justify funding for the last and most marginal of the big federal water projects. Indeed, most of the authorized projects that remain to be constructed could never really pass economic muster, even when Congress gave project proponents a deal on economic criteria (Beard 1993, Reisner 1986, Miller 1985). Second, shifting demographics in the western United States have changed public demand for new water projects. The western United States is highly urban, 1 and therefore produces fewer representatives with genuinely rural/agricultural districts. Meanwhile, in the face of ardent competition for scarce water resource development opportunities, the cities are calling for new municipal and industrial water projects, and some of them have the resources to build their own without federal assistance (Ellison 1 Population demographics in America reveal an increasingly urban society. In 1900, the Census Bureau placed 39.6% of US residents in urban areas and 60.4% in rural areas. By 1990, 75.2% of Americans lived in urban areas, with the western United States being the most urbanized part of the country: Northeast region 78.9% urban; Midwest region 71.7% urban; South region 68.6% urban; and West region 86.3% (US Department of Commerce 1995). KEY WORDS: Environmental management; Administrative politics; Water policy; Endangered Species Act; Animas-La Plata, Bureau of Reclamation Environmental Management Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 429–439 r 1999 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.