BOARD00198

• Board Meeting Date: 1/15/1969
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

Finally, there was a direction that the
Director of Natural Resources should report
his findings to the General Assembly now in
session.

I

The sum of $50,000 was appropriated for
the study in fiscal year 1967-68 and a further
sum of $150,000 was appropriated for the
current fiscal year. The funds were appropriat-
ed to the Director of Natural Resources and
were used to employ the services of various
consulting engineers and attorneys.

As a result of various contracts, eight
separate but related proposals..have. been
drafted, copies of which have been sent to
the Board members. The staff of this Board
was not requested to participate in the prepa-
ration of the various proposals. However,
all of the proposals were submitted to us
for review, but at a very late date.

I

Under date of December 21, 1964, we
submitted to Governor Love a letter, at his
request, in which we outlined the problems
concerning the integration of ground waters
with surface water decrees. In that letter
we set forth specific recommendations con-
cerning the enactment of new legislation and
the revision of existing legislation. Some
of these recommendations have been enacted
into law and others remain to be acted upon.
It was in the light of our remaining recom-
mendations that we reviewed the various
bills which have been proposed. Our recom-
mendations were made to the Governor after
many years of exhaustive research concerning
the water adjudication and administration
problem. Slightly over four years have
elapsed since we made those recommendations.
Continuing research strengthens our belief .
that the recommendations of 1964 were basi-
cally sound. However, the recommendations
made then were not in such specific detail
that they could be incorporated immediately
into necessary legislative proposals.