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Act is working and it has worked in both wet and dry years. 

 Yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle reports that California's 

 salmon population has "exploded" this year to legendary 

 proportions. Although this has been a very wet year, I believe a 

 considerable part of this fish success story is attributable to 

 the kinds of innovations contained in the CVPIA. According to 

 California waterfowl experts, the four Sacramento Valley Wildlife 

 refuges, allocated firm water supplies for the first time, 

 experienced a 20% increase in waterfowl usage during the 1993- 

 1994 water year over previous years, before the CVPIA was 

 enacted. 



Instead of rushing to change the CVPIA, the Congress needs 

 to adopt a few of the old-time virtues, starting with patience. 

 How can we begin unraveling a bill which is less than three years 

 old and which is still in a relatively early stage of 

 implementation? According to the Department of Interior, 

 numerous rules and regulations implementing the statute remain to 

 be finalized. Appropriately, the rulemaking process and not new 

 legislation should be the forum for resolving concerns with CVPIA 

 implementation. In fact, we will not even know if there are 

 flaws in the CVPIA itself until the rulemaking is completed. 



Patience is not the only virtue we must apply to California 

 water issues. Cooperation is just as important. For example, 

 cooperation is the key to the new Bay/Delta Accord, agreed to 

 last December, which has all the primary stakeholders on 

 California water issues working together to solve the problems of 

 the San Francisco Bay Estuary. The presence of the CVPIA was 



