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David H. Getches

David H. Getches, professor of law at the University of Colorado School of Law, is a nationally recognized water resources and Indian law expert. He formerly served as executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources under Governor Richard D. Lamm, and as the founding executive director of the Native American Rights Fund. His many publications include Controlling Water Use: The Unfinished Business of Water Quality Control (Natural Resources Law Center, 1991), Water Law in a Nutshell (West, 1990), and legal texts on water and Indian law.

Searching Out the Headwaters

Searching Out the Headwaters

Change And Rediscovery In Western Water Policy

To the uninitiated, water policy seems a complicated, hypertechnical, and incomprehensible subject: a tangle of engineering jargon and legalese surrounding a complex, delicate, and interrelated structure. Decisions concerning the public's waters involve scant public participation, and in such a context, reform seems risky at best.

Searching Out the Headwaters addresses that precarious situation by providing a thorough and straightforward analysis of western water use and the outmoded rules that govern it.