Many common threads connect geographically separate regulatory and public concerns. Oregon has peak and ecological flows for water storage projects, Nevada has water quality draining from waste rock disposal areas (RDAs), West Virginia (and other Appalachian coal mining areas) has downstream water quality and aquatic biota from valley fill runoff. Related concerns involve fish and the Endangered Species Act (ESA): bull trout in Idaho; salmon in Oregon and Washington; Lahontan cutthroat trout in Nevada. The common threads include areas of topographic and hydrologic complexity, high variability, multiple basin sizes, and low confidence in scientific analyses of the processes and numeric modeling results.