WSP10458

• File Number: 8210.110.60
• Description: Colorado River Water Users Association
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 12/1/1960
• Author: CRWUA
• Title: Proceedings of the 17th Annual Conference
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Annual Report

Construction of Paonia Dam on thePaonia, Colorado, Project
is more than 80 percent completed, and work is going ahead on lining
of the Fire Mountain Canal. Work also is underway on the main canal
of the Hammond Project in New Mexico, and a contract will be award-
ed early in 1961 for the diversion dam on the San Juan River near
Bloomfield, New Mexico. A contract has been awarded for building
Crawford Dam on the Smith Fork Project, Colorado, and bids will be
invited and construction started before July ,1961 on the Lemon Dam,
Florida Project, Colorado, and on the Font<:jnelle Dam, Seedskadee
Project, Wyoming.

This, very briefly, is where we stand today in the development
of the Colorado River Basin, We--and that includes all levels of Gov-
ernment and all the participating water- and, power-user organizations
have accomplished much in the first quarter century of comprehensive
water resource development of the basin, 11here are some major pro-
blems ahead, the most immediate being in ib-tegrating the Upper Basin
storage reservoirs into the overall development.,

Representatives of the states and water -user organizations in
both basins have been kept fully informed of:the progress of Upper Basin
reservoir filling studies, so I shall keep this review to the minimum,

In the Colorado River Storage Project, the Congress had auth-
orized a project whose initial group of storalge reservoirs would hold
some 34 million acre-feet of water, nearly three times the present
average annual flow of the river at Lees Ferry. This storage and annual
losses from evaporation amounting to about 'one-half million acre-feet
will have to be acquired from a river which supplies great irrigated'areas
below Hoover Dam, both in the United States and Mexico, and vast amounts
of energy at the downstream Hoover, Davis,: and Parker powerplants.

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As far as consumptive uses of waterlin the United,States are con-
cerned- -irrigation, municipal, and industri~l uses - -and treaty obliga-
tions to Mexico, there is excess storable water in favorable periods of
runoff sufficient to fill the upper basin rese','voirs. We cannot anticipate
in advance when years of exces s flow will occur, Consequently, we must
anticipate the worst and the average along with the best in deriving our
rules for filling the reservoirs,

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We do not plan to keep all the upper j,asin storage reservoirs full
, at all times nor do we need full storage to bbgin power production, The
basic philosophy of the project requires large storage which is available
for withdrawal in time of low runoff tobe released to the lower basin,
Hence, water is stored when the supply is p entiful and returned to the river
when the supply is limited.

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