WSP12606 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

0012~O BLACK CANYON INFORMATION PAPER Oct. 2000 Attachment B Information from the Legislative Hearings for CRSP The following quotes are from a six volume set entitled Legislative Actions Colorado River Storage Proiect. U.S. Government Printing Office Vol. IV, House Hearings 83d Congress, 2d Session, p. 17: The CRSP was a comprehensive project to enable the development of water use in the Compact's Upper Basin by providing sufficient storage facilities to guarantee the supply necessary for delivery to the Lower Basin under Compact requirements. The power facilities were designed to not only repay the cost of their construction, but also pay most of the cost of the participating projects that was beyond the ability of the irrigation districts to pay. Once the power facilities were paid out, then the money was to be spent paying off the participating projects. Vol. IV, p. 50, statement of Regional Director, Bureau of Reclamation., E, O. Larson: There are serious problems confronting the States q/ the upper basin in any plan for using their share of Colorado River water which can be resolved only through the comprehensive basinwide plan nowproposed Paramount among them is the compact requirement that the upper basin States deliver to the lower basin not less than 75 million acre feet over any period of 10 successive years. The uneven flow of the river with its erratic periods of drought and flood, makes the fulfillment of the commitment to the lower basin and substantial development in the upper basin impossible without river regulation. Such regulation would require additional storage facilities on a scale that dwarfs past developments in the upper basin. In selecting storage sites for river regulation in the plan of full development, we have striven to obtain at the lowest cost the largest yield of water, the maximum power output of the river, and the minimum evaporation from the reservoirs. .., 42 percent of the upper basin's apportioned water cannot be put to use unless excess waters are impounded during periods of prolonged high flaws in a system of long-time holdover reservoirs for release during prolonged periods of low flows. Testimony of Mr. Larson, p. 144, citing a statement from a previous Congressional report which concluded: Increased diversions of water for use by agriculture and industry on the western slope and for transmountain diversions will d~pend upon the provision of sufficient storage capacity in the reservoirs for conservation of flood flows and some cyclic regulation in order that Colorado may make full use of the water allocated to it by the compact. Cyclic regulation of Colorado River over periods longer than 20 years will also be necessary. B-1