as having high economic values, that support began to grow outside the fish and 

 wildlife agencies for more fairly considering the best way of providing for instream 

 flows in long-range water planning. The biologist participating on these interagency 

 planning teams argued for including adequate protection for sufficient streamflow to 

 protect the fish and wildlife habitats as equal elements in these comprehensive plans. 



The first national recognition of a need for qualifying "that amount of flow 

 sufficient to support those values of naturally flowing streams held in high esteem by 

 man" was reported in the 1968 National Water Assessment,' which stated that "lack 

 of comparable data (to those provided for offstream uses) on instream uses has 

 prevented meaningful analyses and comparisons." Thus began an era of compre- 

 hensive coordinated planning which provided a forum for elevating instream values 

 to the status of legitimate functional uses of the nation's waters. 



Institutional Awareness 



The institutional awareness opened the decade of the 1970s when, on January 1, 

 President Nixon signed into law the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. 

 This act required environmental policy statements to be prepared and distributed 

 publicly describing the environmental effects of any significant federal action or 

 action requiring a federal permit. 



April 22, 1970, was the first Earth Day. This nationally celebrated citizens' 

 movement is credited as the beginning of an awareness by the average citizen for a 

 need to protect environmental values. Other legislation was passed during the early 

 1970s which provided additional impetus to this growing recognition of a need to do 

 business differently in the water planning sector. 



Figure 1 presents a chronology of the important legal and institutional events 

 contributing to the increased interest in instream flow needs. Several significant 

 studies grew out of the emerging legislation and institutional attempts to cope with 

 this "new" water use identity. Stimulated by the continued insistence of the water 

 planners for quantified expressions of instream flow needs, biologists of the state and 

 federal fish and wildlife agencies began earnestly examining the available techniques 

 and the need for improvement. The first collective action resulted in the proceedings 

 of a conference held in Portland, Oregon, in March 1 972. This meeting was organized 

 by field personnel of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and sponsored by the Pacific 

 Northwest Commission; it was attended by over a hundred biologists and water 

 resources planners. The participants heard of the techniques then in practice by the 

 Oregon Wildlife Commission, U.S. Forest Service in Utah, and state and federal 

 biologists from Montana. 



In 1971, the Washington State Legislature had passed legislation calling for the 

 establishment of base flows in all rivers in the state to protect instream values, 

 particularly the anadromous fishery resource. This mandate stimulated the new 

 Department of Ecology in the State of Washington to sponsor a second conference 

 that fall. In November 1972, knowledge-thirsty planners and biologists assembled 

 again in Olympia, Washington, to hear from additional speakers who had struggled 

 with the process of quantifying instream flow requirements. Notable among the 

 papers presented was the work of Collings, et al., who described spawning 

 requirements of salmon in Washington's coastal streams and the work of recreation 

 planners, who attempted to describe the stream flow requirements of this highly 

 recognized public resource. In the months that followed there were numerous field 

 studies conducted by biologists from a variety of agencies. The resulting recom- 

 mendations began to find their way into the comprehensive planning meetings being 

 pursued throughout the western states. While these studies did not implement the 

 recommendations, they did provide visibility to the arguments for protecting 

 instream flows and the limitations in the available methodologies for allowing the 

 analysis of increments of change in stream flow. 



121 



