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<br />001478 <br /> <br />stream. <br /> <br />The Paragraph (d) obligation not to deplete the flow of <br /> <br />the River below 75 m.a.f. was a vestige of the Commis- <br /> <br />sioners' earlier effort to divide all the water of the <br /> <br />River. If they simply intended that each Basin take the same <br /> <br />amount of water from the River, plus an additional 1.0 <br /> <br />m.a.f. for the Lower Basin, while reserving the excess for a <br /> <br />future apportionment, the question must be asked as to why <br /> <br />they bothered to retain it? Hoover, in fact, late in the <br /> <br />negotiations urged them to delete Paragraph (d): <br /> <br />Before we adjourn I want to raise one broad <br />question on this pact, - in Article III, the whole <br />paragraph relates to the minimum flow of water, <br />seventy five million acre feet, and the four <br />million minimum, seems to me to be worth more or <br />less discussion in the interest of both the upper <br />and lower basin. You will recall, in our discus- <br />sions we originally started in an endeavor to work <br />out a division of the water on the basis of a <br />percentage, and as one corollary of that percen- <br />tage, we would say from a minimum which was not an <br />appropriation. A percentage of delivery at Lee <br />Ferry. Now, we have changed the entire basis of <br />the pact to allocations of quantities. I might say <br />that in general we have come back to Mr. Norviel's <br />original proposition, except that we have made the <br />division between groups instead of individual <br />states. I think that is considerably of a compli- <br />ment to Mr. Norviel' s perspicacity. And in so <br />doing we now have a situation where a different <br />allocation of water has been made to the upper <br />states, and a different allocation, for a period of <br />years, to the lower states. As a matter of actual <br />realism, that minimum supply will come to the lower <br />states, because it is less than the surplus <br />allocation made to the upper states, and it has <br />this concrete disadvantage, as I see it, to both <br />sides, - it establishes an obligation to control a <br />great river on the part of the northern states, <br />which will be difficult to drill into the heads of <br />laymen as an obligation capable of performance, and <br />as to the lower states its complexion is of giving <br /> <br />-53- <br />