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001472 Should the Upper states divert 180,000,000 acre-feet of water onto the uplands during any ten-year period, there would still be 90,000,000 acre-feet pass out of the return flow to the river.128 Richard Sloan, the legal advisor to Arizona's Colorado River Commission, wrote during this period: The Compact is based upon two major assumptions ... second, that there is sufficient water in the river if conserved to meet all the demands for agricultural and business use, both in the upper and the lower basins, and in addition to meet all the probable demands of the southwest. That there is sufficient water for such purposes is no mere assumption, as may be shown upon a study of the river and of various estimates made by the reclama- tion service and by state engineers. ...129 Davis' earlier claim that the Upper Basin could not safely commit to delivering more than 6S m.a.f. every ten years was probably a bargaining tactic. The measurements he cited were not thoroughly considered during the Compact negotiations, and 7S m.a.f. was less than half of his low flow data in any event. The USGS measurements at Yuma, which the Commis- sioners did consider at length, indicated a flow of 163 m.a.f. during the lowest lO years, and that figure excluded consumption of water of at least S.O m.a.f. per annum. The most obvious expression of the Commissioners' confidence in the abundant flow of the River is Article III ~ of the Compact itself. Paragraphs (f) and (g) provide a fairly detailed procedure for the "Further equitable appor- tionment of the beneficial uses of the waters of the Colorado River System unapportioned by paragraphs (a), (b), and (C)." Furthermore, Article I, to which the Commissioners attached -47-