The federal government's water-management agency can no longer operate as though Colorado River water is abundant, said one of Congress' leaders on natural resources Thursday night.

"The Bureau of Reclamation has to reinvent itself," said U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif. and longtime leader on natural resource policy. "It has to address the future in an innovative way and not be tied so strongly to the past."

Miller made the remarks as he accepted the David R. Brower Award for Conservation by the Salt Lake City-based Glen Canyon Institute, an organization that made its name by calling for the draining of Lake Powell.

The institute now focuses on scientific issues surrounding the vitality of the Colorado River, and much of Thursday's program was devoted to updates about how climate change might affect the 27 million people and 3.5 million acres of farmland that rely on the 1,450-mile river.

Miller was a driving force behind legislation in the early 1990s to complete the Central Utah Project -- the water program behind construction of the Jordanelle Dam in Wasatch County -- along with the creation of a mitigation fund to address the environmental damage caused by decades of dam-building in Utah.

He also pushed for moderating flows through the Glen Canyon Dam to lessen the harm high-energy water releases were causing to Grand Canyon National Park

The northern California lawmaker served from 1991 to 1994 as the chairman of the House committee that oversees the nation's mining programs, water, national parks and other natural resources.

Miller attacked the departing Bush administration for what he described as a culture of corruption in the Interior Department. Science, he added, was "tampered with" and "pushed aside."

"You don't get to change the conclusions for political reasons," he said. Instead, with a change in administration in Washington, science should be harnessed to help make smarter decisions about preserving already-taxed water supplies.

Scientists who spoke at the conference talked about Western water resources that are dwindling in the face of growing populations and are threatened by global warming.

Tim Barnett, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, told the conference that no models of Colorado River water -- even without climate change factored in -- predict an increased flow.

"You have a river that's on the brink of failure," he said.

fahys@sltrib.com