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1 to about 8 1/2 million acre-feet. That estimated figure is not absolutely determined by any means. Other engineers have reduced it to as low as 7,900,000 acre-feet; but 8 1/2 million is the approximate figure that we can probably agree on. "There are 300 miles of river channel below Boulder Dam before we reach the Imperial Dam on the American side of the boundary. Six hundred thousand acre-feet, conse,-vatively estimated, will be lost in that river channel under ultimate conditions, in order to deliver the water to Imperial Dam. So, 8 1/2 million acre-feet is reduced to 7,900,000, any way you figure it." * * * "Besides the California contracts there is a Nevada water contract that I am sure they will tcdl you later is equally sacred to them. "Arizona has a contract for 2,800,000 acre-feet out of the main stream of the Colorado River. Those contracts add up to 8,462,COO acre-feet. "We started off wHh 8 1/2 million acre-feet at Boulder Dam, but in order to deliver it we lost some on the way. We have 7,900,000 acre-feet to do the work thcll needs 8,462,000 to supply. That is, with- out a drop going to Mexico. We already, wlthin a period of a generation, I should say, face an inevitable shortage in the lower basin in the main stream of the Colorado River, whether Mexico is allowed a drop of water or not. "I know nothing about international law and little about water rights, but I can add up simple arithmetic; and there is a water shortage coming on the lower Colorado River 'Nhether Mexico gets a drop or not. This is more evidence of why we really worry whether Mexico gets 750,000 acre- feet or I 1/2 million acre-feet. The shortage of water to the lower basin can be doubled by whether Jl!!2xico gets the water allotted by this proposed treaty or does not ge" it. "You have been tole! here that after all the 'Lreaty means 3 percent or, at most, 8 percent of the water supply. That is just nonsense and is meaning less, in that 16,000,000 acre-feet referred to in the compact is dedicated to the basin States. It is not all in use by them yet, but it is all allocated. Projects are based on that water. Every drop of that water is planned for use two or threG times over in most watersheds of the basin, to my own knowledgc. So that 16,000,000 acre-feet is taken up and gone. "What we are dealing with now is the surplus beyond that allocation. We are told that WG cannoc do anything with that surplus until 1963. The compact says that we cam,ot perfect that righ't until 1963. That is an added handicap, of course, as I pr8sume it is true. But WG are initiating rights in that surplus that are gOing to stand up, I am sure. We arc vitally interested in the surplus. We have built our aqueduct project to divert 1,500 second- feet for the southern California coastal plain, but half of that capacity will be totally lost and vlasted, in my opinion, if the effects of this treaty -32-