BOARD00226

• Board Meeting Date: 4/1/1970
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

I

We had on the Gunnison River above Blue
Mesa a rather traumatic repeat of the ice jam
flooding experience that has taken place so
many times in the recent past. The stream
through the area between the back waters of
Blue Mesa and the community of Gunnison is
rather quiet and shallow. It freezes and of
course the water is then diverted by the freez-
ing out of the banks. It refreezes and seeks
new paths and pretty soon it spreads from the
highway through one side to the base of the
hills on the other. This causes severe distress
to the people of the area. We have done some
emergency work in cooperation with the Corps of
Engineers and with the people in the area, the
state and county, to keep the water out of homes
and off of ranch properties. I think with fair
success as an emergency effort. But the long-
range solution seems to lie in a combination of
factors. We need some channel improvement I
perhaps some easements to allow for this and
reduce the distress of individual landowners.
It is a difficult problem and I want to assure
you that anything the Bureau of Reclamation can
do we want to do. It presents some legal ques-
tions for us but we hope eventually we can at
least bring about possible improvement in it.
This shows you more of the problem and you can
see the little 'L' shaped dike upstream from the
buildings that was built to keep the water out
of those homes.

Next is Morrow Point. We drew it down for
a grouting program there and have since refilled.
Morrow Point is now full and will continue that
way.

I

This is Navajo. We will accumulate storage
above the agreed upon recreation level of 6030
feet, going a few feet above that and it will be
held there during the recreation season and
through the fall.

Lake Mead, because of the necessity of
delivering 8.3 million acre-feet in order to