BOARD00100

• Board Meeting Date: 5/11/1960
• Description: Minutes
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

r,m. EAKES:

"Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is
William Eakes. I am attorney for the South-
western Water Conservation Board.

First I want to say I'm not going to
give you my four hour presentation on this
as I think most of you have heard me on the
subject before. The Southwestern Board feels
that this proposal, rather than aiding our
problem, makes it worse. I want to amplify
that and give you the background that leads
to our thinking in this regard. For those
of you who don't fully understand the situa-
tion involved, the San Juan River arises in
the San Juan. Mountains' in southwestern Colo-
rado and flows into New Mexioo.westerly
across the northern part of New Mexico,
through on into Farmington, and on down to
the Colorado River. The Animas River.arise~
up above Silverton, Colorado, and flows down
through Durango, Colorado, into New Mexico
and has its confluence with the San Juan
River at Farmington.

The problem that is involved, and in
our discussions of this matter and in this
legislation, is: What is the effect of the
construction of these projects upon water
rights in Colorado? There are certain uses
below Farmington, which are principally
Indian uses and the largest one of which is
still Under construction and not in opera-
tion~ which call for approximately 95,000
acre-feet of water. Then there is another
use, the use of the Utah Construction Company
and some smaller uses, again below Farming-
ton, that calls for approximately a 60,000
acre-foot demand of water. I want you to
bear in mind that there is nothing to keep
the Indians, or other users, from expanding
those uses into a much greater demand for
water at that point.

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Now the Navajo Dam has been constructed
as a main stem regulatory reservoir on the
San Juan River above its confluence with the
Animas River. In the operation studies that
New Mexico has proposed for the use of the
water in the Navajo Reservoir, they have con-'
templated the drying up of the San Juan River,
in effect, in a study that if the reservoir

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