8014 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

1 lt d th R Th C l d Ri B i Th A esu s ver greements an e e o ora o as n: e authorization of the CAP. California was, however, incensed at its loss in the ' Supreme Court, and the Upper Division States feared, as they always had, further Lower Basin development. The legislation introduced by the Arizona delegation was immediately bottled up. Arizona had to mollify more than California. The concern about the water supply [of the Colorado River being less than assumed when the 1922 compact was negotiated] had spread to the Upper Basin. If the river flow ... [was as little] as many now suspected, then the upper states, after fulfilling their obligation to the Lower Basin, would receive [only) 6.5 million acre- , feet, a million acre-feet less than anticipated in the 1922 compact. ... Worried that such water-supply estimates might later prevent them from obtaining projects on their own, they tied their fortunes to the Arizona bill. They agreed to support it but only in exchange for a provision authorizing five [additional CRSP participating] projects for the Upper Basin -- Animas-La Plata, Dolores, Dallas [Creek), West Divide, and San Miguel. so 1 t 1 These five projects would all benefit Colorado, with the Animas-La Plata Project also serving water to New Mexico. In addition, Utah sought the authorization of the Uintah Unit of the Central Utah Project, this being the fifth unit of that project, and New Mexico sought the authorization of the Hooker Dam on the headwaters of the Gila River, which river lies in the Lower Basin. A brochure circulated during the legislative debate over the CAP waxed eloquently about the five Colorado projects -- and illustrates the fervor brought to the debate by Colorado's water development interests: There is a river -- and its name is the Colorado. The streams thereof ... "shall make glad the city" .... The means through which these streams will do their gladdening are five reclamation projects in western Colorado: The Animas-La Plata, the Dolores, the Dallas Creek, the San Miguel and the West Divide projects. These projects stretch across the Western Slope of Colorado like the five fingers of a giant hand, trying to conserve for use in Colorado some of the waters which are allocated to that state. ... In total, the Fiver Fingers projects will provide about 719 thousand acre-feet of water annually .... Of this total, 398 thousand acre-feet represent actual depletions] .... Such depletion, in turn, represents only a portion of ... B0 Handley, supra note 34, at 36. 25