WSP10989

• File Number: 8510.100.60
• Description: Rio Grande Compact Commission
• Basin: Rio Grande
• Water Division: 3
• Date: 1/1/1942
• Title: Fourth Annual Report of the Rio Grande Compact Commission 1942
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Annual Report

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Rio Grande Compact Commission

HIS EXCELLENCY, JOHN C. VIVIAN
Governor of the State of Colorado
HIS EXCELLENCY, JOHN J. DEMPSEY
Governor of the State of New Mexico
HIS EXCELLENCY, COKE R. STEVENSON
Governor of the State of Texas

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Sirs:
The third annual meeting of the Rio Grande Compact
Commission was held in EI Paso, Texas, on February 23 and
24, 1942. One other meeting was held in Denver, Colorado, on
June 21 and 22, 1942.

At the third annual meeting, the Commission reviewed
and adopted as official, records of deliveries and releases,
which disclosed that Colorado had accrued credits in its 1941
deliveries at the Colorado-New Mexico State-line, of 127,000
acre feet, and New Mexico accrued credits of 49,400 acre feet
at San Marcial, and that the accrued releases of water from
Project Storage, was 138,100 acre feet less than allowed by
the Compact,

The records of releases from Project Storage show that on
most of the days from January 1, 1942 to April 30, 1942, water
was released from Elephant Butte Reservoir in excess of
Project requirements and was currently passed through
Caballo Reservoir in anticipation of spill. On some days in
this period water was released from Elephant Butte Reservoir
in excess of the quantity released from Caballo Reservoir on
the same day; this excess is deemed to have been a transfer of
Usable Water from the upper to the lower reservoir, and not
water released in anticipation of spill.

If water had not been released from Elephant Butte
Reservoir in anticipation of spill, the spillway at Elephant
Butte Reservoir would have overflowed on April 30, 1942 in
the amount of 7,600 acre feet. Actual Spill is therefore con-
sidered to have taken place on this date when the sum of the
quantity in storage in Elephant Butte Reservoir plus the
aggregate of all releases from that reservoir in anticipation
of spill, equalled 2,219,000 acre feet in 1942.

Thereafter, water spilled from Elephant Butte Reservoir
or released from that reservoir in excess of Project require-
ments and currently passed through Caballo Reservoir, was
Actual Spill.

The first water so spilled was C<:redit Water in the aggre-
gate amount of the difference between the total Credit Water
of Colorado and New Mexico and the aggregate gain in the