A bold policy oar in Euphrates’ waters

Among his accomplishments was his famous 1875 study of the West, which described an area largely without political demarcations. (California, made a "state" in 1849, being one large exception.) It was called the "Report of the Columbia River of the West and its Tributaries."

A central argument Powell made in that report to the U.S. president and Congress was that the boundaries of yet-to-be-defined states should be contiguous with natural river basins. Missing this opportunity as the country defined states would solve a lot of political headaches before they happened, particularly regarding water sharing. Of course, no one listened and most political boundaries in the region today are just straight lines, easy for cartographers in the capital but oblivious of many important realities. States in America’s West now spend undue energy battling one another over water rights, dam management, river flows, etc.

Of course we here at the Daily News have been influenced by the "basin thinking" of Maj. Powell as our daily "Horizons" page on Turkey’s near abroad reflects. But the point we seek to make relates to Turkey’s remarkably fast response to Iraq’s pressing water needs by agreeing even in the absence of a formal accord to increase the water flow in the Euphrates River.

Political boundaries intersecting the logic of riverine systems, Maj. Powell’s clever suggestion notwithstanding, bedevil policy-makers everywhere. Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia struggle to reach accord on the Nile. Hungary frequently skirmishes with neighbors over management of the Danube. The lack of effective pollution control on the Volga is killing the Black Sea. And water issues are the back stage of any effort at peace-making between Israel, the Palestinians and Syria.

And so we are heartened by the vision, the courage and the thoughtfulness reflected in the three-part plan for management of the Euphrates and Tigris river basins developed by the Foreign Ministry and on which we reported yesterday.

The report animates with the keen thinking of Maj. Powell: Basins are comprehensive natural systems that must be managed that way. This report is a major step. Its results, including development of comprehensive data on the hydraulics of this basin, should form the basis of thinking and negotiation in relations between Turkey, Iraq and Syria.

"The problems of the Euphrates and Tigris basin are not going to go away," the report reads. "Turkey, Syria and Iraq will always be neighbors and the two great rivers will always flow through them."

Maj. Powell would certainly salute such words of enlightened leadership.