WSP08975

• File Number: 8200.300.40.A
• Description: Colorado River Compact
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 11/15/1922
• Author: Co. R Compact Comm.
• Title: Minutes of Colorado Compact Commission - Meeting #17
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Publication

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hundred thousand aore feet, so that I think it may be said at

the outset that it is wholly out of the Questien to censider any

guaranty based on any such figures as eighty millien, or eigilty-

odd million feet. The final figure, I think, may be e:cpressed this

way: In spite of the individual opposition of some of the states

to any guaranty, there is a willingness to enter upon a guaranty

providing there is a sufficient margin of safety in the figures

adopted so that there is roasOn to believe that the guaranty can

be complied with. None of us want to sign a guaranty with the

feeling that somotimo it would be violated, and I presume none

of the southorn states want such a guare.ntyo

Further, there is decided opposition to guaranteeing any-

thing in excess of thc amount whioh appears to be neoessary for

the needs of the lower states. 'I'aking the moasured flow for the

ten years, - tho lowest ten years for which we have a record, which

is the first ten years, - one half of that flow would amount,

roughly, to seventy-seven million acre feet. The span of twenty

years is, of course, very short and it is impossible to knew

that there will bo no lower flow in any subseQuent period. We

feel, therefore, that there sheuld be applied to those figures

a very considerable margin of safety. If we were asked merely

to divide the water, that would bo another thing, but we seem

to bo just now in the position of discussing a guaranty under

whieh the penalty for drouth,- tho penalty for a lack of water

in the river,-falls upon the upper states, and as we are parti-

oularly asked to guarantee against such a situation, consoQuently

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17th-S.P.
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