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The charts on pages 26 and 27 illustrate some of the pertinent histori- cal facts related to the amounts of water produced by the Colorado River System above Lee Ferry) Arizona, the compact division point between the Upper and Lower Colorado River Basins. The first chart, on page 26, is entitled Colorado River Flow at Lee Ferry, Arizona. The top of each vertical bar represents the estimated virgin flow of the river, i.e., the flow of the river in millions of acre-feet past Lee Ferry for a given year had it not been depleted by activities of man. Each vertical bar has two components: The lower shaded part represents the estimated or measured historic flow at Lee Ferry, and the difference between the two sections of the bar in any given year represents the stream depletion, or the amount of water esti- mated to have been removed by man from the virgin supply upstream from Lee Ferry. It is worth noting that in 1977 and again in 1981 the historic flow at Lee Ferry exceeded the virgin flow, Beginning in 1962, part of this depletion at Lee Ferry was caused by the retention and storage of water in storage units of the Colorado River Storage Project. The horizontal line (at approximately 15 million acre-feet) shows the 10ng- term average virgin flow from 1896 through 1990. Because the Colo- rado River Compact is administered on the basis of running averages covering periods of ten years, the progressive ten-year average historic and virgin flows are displayed on this chart, The second chart on page 27, entitled Lee Ferry Average Annual Flow for Selected Periods, is a graphical representation of historic and virgin flow averages for several periods of record. The periods of water years selected were those to which reference is usually made for various purposes in documents pertaining to the Colorado River System. Several important hydrologic facts are apparent from these two charts on pages 26 and 27. (1) A vast majority of the high flows occurred prior to 1929. (2) Since the 1924-1933 decade, the progressive ten-year average vir- gin flow has not exceeded the average virgin flow except in the 1941- 1950 and the exceptionally wet 1975-1984 through 1981-1990 decades. (3) For the period 1896-1921, which is prior to the Colorado River Compact ofl922, the average virgin flow was estimated to be 16.8 million acre-feet per year, which is considerably greater than for any other period selected, including the long-term average. A stream- gaging station at Lees Ferry, Arizona was not installed until 1921. 25