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, "Much the same applies to the Yuma project. That has been notorious for slopping water around, as we call it, out in the West, and as water gets scarcer in Arizona, even the Yuma people with an old water right won't be allowed to waste it the way they have. There again the return flow will gradually diminish. For this ultimate period, not the next decade or two but finally, all these projects will have to come down to an operation basiS that will use water economically. It has been enforced in other States by the courts, and I think Arizona will find water valuable enough to get around to that when they have to. "Return flow has been based on assumptions that leave us fearful that the treaty enforcement will simply have to fall back on Lake Mead storage for deliveries. Answering Senator Downey's question directly, my considered judgment is that instead of 930,000 acre-feet that was listed as return flow, the quantity for this ultimate period, with all these steps taken for proper irrigation in the valley of the Gila River, the average--long-time average, le'l us say--would not e;<ceed 250,000 acre-feel. But in critical periods of drought, that we know have happened in the past and are going to come again, with less watcr available for diversion, because Arizona sometimes offered to take half o{ this shortage if California will take the other half, there will be less water to put on the fields. The return flow simply cannot be the same toward the end of drought periods when water gets scarcer and scarcer. In such a case of a long drought, it would not exceed about 150,000 acre-feet. If lhis 930,000 acre-feet figure should be maintained and insisted on by the other witnesses, and accepted by anyone; that figure, which is the long-time average, cannot possibly prevail in the drought period. It simply does not work out that way. Those years are the ones we are going to suffer from in the future. Those are the years when we fear the application of the treaty. When Lake ~!iead is full there will be water for us and for Mexico, too. That period is not or real concern here. But if 930,000 acre-feet should be the average, as has been mentioned, 500,000 acre-feet wouJd_be_abollt the maximum that could be claimed for the critical periods of drought. Then the State Department estimate of the treaty's burden on Lake Mead would inevitably be more than doubled, just when the storage would be at a mini- mum. My estimate, however, is from 150,000 to 250,000 acre-feet for the return flow reaching the international boundary. "There were two other items mentioned. Glla floods were to be stored, and also de silting water." * * * "Mr. ELDER. That is right. But on this particular item of de silting water, we find the silt cleared up so promptly on the Colorado River that we now have a desanding problem and no longer a desilting problem. Even as early as 1939 that was true. Sand has become scoured out and moves along the river bed. That is still continuing. But for the ultimate period, 30, 40, or 50 years [rom now, or longer, my position is that the river bed will be stabilized to such an extent that the amount of water required to force -34-