Confluence Dec 2010 - A Conversation with Harris Sherman

Greetings!

As Carpe Diem West’s Healthy Headwaters project has gained momentum over the past 12 months, we’ve come to appreciate the increasing degree to which the US Forest Service is focusing its leadership and expertise on the growing threats to the health of the watersheds that supply much of the American West with its drinking water. In October 2009, Congress confirmed a new person for the job of overseeing the work of the US Forest Service and the Natural Resource and Conservation Service: Under Secretary of Agriculture Harris Sherman.

A lifelong Westerner, Sherman is no stranger to the world of water. He’s twice served as Director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, was the Chairman of the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission, has been commissioner on the board of Denver Water, and has practiced natural resource law as a private attorney. This month, we get Under Secretary Sherman’s perspective on solutions to the challenges facing the West’s watersheds.

Kimery - Kimery Wiltshire, Director, Carpe Diem West

A Conversation with Under Secretary Sherman

Q: Why have water issues been such a central part of your career?

HS: Water is one of the defining natural resource issues of our time. I’ve always been fascinated by how we can improve and strengthen our management of water. It is a complicated, often contentious, puzzle. How we provide this limited resource, in terms of both quantity and quality, to meet the expanding needs of cities, farms, manufacturing and energy industries, and other consumptive uses while at the same time protecting watersheds, fish and wildlife, recreational needs and the overall environment is not an easy trick but certainly one that requires creativity and new solutions.