BOARD00284

• Board Meeting Date: 1/12/1971
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

1

Lake Powell. This puts everybody in a fine
mess since Lake Mead today has some 17 or l~
million feet. Under the act of '68, theoreti-
cally you have to waste about 6 million feet
to the ocean from Lake Mead to comply with the
act. The Lower Basin is not going to stand
for that.

I think that the Lower Basin, even though
it would benefit to some extent from the excess
water which we couldn't store in Lake powell,
are vitally interested in this lawsuit. There
is a possibility that if it becomes necessary,
the states of Arizona, California and Nevada
would join with the Upper Basin in defense of
the suit which has been filed. This is only
a possibility and no official stand has been
taken by those states, but at least the water
officials in those states are sympathetic to
the position in which the Upper Basin finds
itself in now. They do have a direct inter-
est in Lake Powell, particularly the State
of Arizona in which the reservoir is located.
If the suit is successful, Lake Powell, a
large part of the time, will be a dry reser-
voir. Arizona certainly does not want this
to happen.

At this time we must wait to see how the
District Court of columbia disposes of the
motions being filed by the Justice Department.
After the ruling is made by the court on those
motions, then we must determine a course of
aetion for the Upper Basin states to pursue.

1

I have met with the Attorney General, Mr.
Dunbar, and he has agreed that this is a matter
which should be handled by this Board. He will
cooperate in every manner with us. We will
keep in touch with him since it is his overall
responsibility to represent the State of Colo-
rado in any legal action. He does want to
have the advice of this Board as to how the
suit should be defended. We have never had
any problems in working with the Attorney