Thank you. It is a real pleasure to be with you here today, especially in such a beautiful place. I am glad to have the rain too. It is appropriate when discussing water.

I love the Rocky Mountains. Lots of other people do too.

There are new subdivisions here in Utah and across much of the rest of the West. Populations are exploding. Though water needs are increasing, water supplies are not. Some watersheds are already over allocated, and water infrastructure is aging.

Those hard facts are driving forces behind the Water 2025 program. We will continue to face water shortages. But we can reduce water conflicts and avert water crises.

Challenge Grants, as we are announcing today, are the heart of the Water 2025 program. The Bureau of Reclamation traditionally funded major projects. That required Congress to pass legislation authorizing a project before the Bureau of Reclamation could be involved.

Funding take many years of members of Congress dividing up limited funds. The number of communities that can benefit is small.

At Water 2025 summits across the West, we recognized the need to encourage innovative projects that could conserve water. We thought that seed money could be helpful. We began with a total of $4 million, a tiny amount in comparison to the hundreds of millions of dollars for a major water storage project.

We succeeded beyond our wildest hopes because people around the country had great ideas. We received over a 100 applications which would have resulted in the conservation of thousands of acre feet.

With such enthusiastic and productive a response, we increased funding in the next year. Clearly, this is one of the most cost-effective ways for the federal government to help states and local communities stretch our water resources.

Challenge Grants are designed to surmount water challenges by being flexible, by encouraging the use of new technologies, by involving local residents, and by establishing long-lasting improvements in water infrastructure.

Challenge Grants are designed to be flexible, since needs vary from district to district. For instance, the citizens of Salt Lake City will benefit from developing a water bank, based on storing water in an underground aquifer. Water banks are an important tool. They need to be tailored to fit each individual location.

Challenge Grants are also designed to encourage the use of new technologies. We have powerful tools at our disposal that can reduce inefficiencies, save money and person power, and spread scarce water resources further.

For instance, the members of the Sevier River Water Users Association will save more than 22,000 acre feet of water each year by enhancing and expanding their existing water monitoring and control system.

The Duchesne County Water Conservancy District is forming a comprehensive monitoring system for the entire county. This will help water managers use the right amount of water to meet the right needs at the right time. Doing so will save the District an estimated 11,000 acre-feet of water per year.

Challenge Grants are also designed to involve local residents. You know the wants of an area best, and can usually see the best ways to meet them. But local involvement is more than seeing needs, it is producing solutions.

We want to involve farmers and ranchers - cooperation based on recognition of property rights. You and all the partners you represent are making things happen in communities all across Utah. I am grateful for your efforts.

The projects that you are working on are going to make a real difference. They represent almost $7 million in water improvements across the state. (Federal contributions are about $2.5 million.) More than 68,000 acre feet of water are likely to be saved each year from these projects.

One acre-foot is sufficient to supply a family of four or five people for up to 18 months. So, more than 270,000 people could potentially benefit from the savings of these projects - about 10 percent of Utah's population.

What we are seeing here in Utah and Idaho is what we are seeing all across the West - local people taking the Challenge Grant challenge by seeing water needs and stepping up to produce innovative solutions.

This year, we are awarding almost $10 million worth of Challenge Grants. They will help to fund 43 projects in 13 states. In total, more than $27 million worth of improvements in water infrastructure will be made, counting local and private funds.

We will see the pipelines go down and the control systems go up. But what we won't see is also significant. We won't see the conflicts that have been avoided. We won't see the crises that have been averted.

Instead, we will see growing cities and thriving communities. We will see water supplies conserved so they can stretch to meet the needs of this industrious state and this flourishing Nation.

I believe it can happen. As Ronald Reagan once observed, "There are no such things as limits to growth, because there are no limits on the human capacity for intelligence, imagination and wonder."

Thank you.