BOARD00100

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

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we are talking aboti.t'the Animas River.

To go back to the present proposal, the
first, on page 2 again, the first part of
subparagraph (al is the proposal that this
Board at one time adopted as the stand of the
State of Colorado. It, in effect, is the pro-
posal that the Southwestern Water Board wants
to be insetted in the bill. But the proviso,
about halfway through there where it says
· AND PROVIDED FURTHER * * * *, ~ from there on
we don't like it. In affect, what it amounts
to is to change the operation of the Upper
Colorado River Compact. Now the, Upper Colo-
rado River Compact in Article XIV (c) pro-
vides that:

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'The uses of the waters of the San Juan
Ri ver and any" of its tributaries wi thin
either State which are dependent upon a com-
mon source of water * * * * * shall in times
of water shortages be reduced in such quantity
that the resulting consumptive use in each
State will bear the same proportionate rela-
tion to the consumptive use made in each State
during times of average water supply as deter-
mined by the Commission * * * *.'

The key to what I am talking about is
the statement 'which are dependent upon a
common source of water'. Now the affect of
this proviso in subparagraph (a) is to apply
a sharing shortage principle to waters that
are not 'a common source of supply'. The
Animas River is not common to the San Juan
River above their confluence. We don't think
that we should agree to any further extension
of a sharing shortage principle. The ultimate
affect of this proposition is that in years
when the river flow is adequate and there is
hot much shortage anyway, Navajo Reservoir
would bypass the w~ter for those downstream
uses but when' the water supply becomes seri-
ously short, when we have a drought, that
load then falls upon the Animas River.
o . . . . .

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Now - how do we know that this is the
affect of this? Well, the Bureau of Recla-
mation, through some of its officials and a
committee headed by Ur, Randy Riter, made' a
study of the affect of this proposition, which