BOARD00374

• Board Meeting Date: 9/30/1957
• Description: Minutes
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

1~7

I

representing the different water con-
servancy districts and our good friend,
Ed Johnson, who is our representative
on the Upper Colorado River Commission,
I am glad to have the opportunity of
speaking to you on this most important
subject.

I don't claim to be a water expert.
Mr. Aspinall has said that the Congress
has a right to look to this State and
to look to its Water Board, which is the
policy making Board for the people of
the State, for answers. Our job over
in the Executive Department is to admin-
ister the executive end. We are aware
of those things and listening to the
Bureau's representatives give it's point
of view, points up to me certainly one
thing and that is that we have a water
authority in this State, which is our
Water Board and they are our policy
making board and it is incumbent upon
that Board to find out what the water
policy of this Board is going to be and
what it should be.

I think there has been a great deal
of misunderstanding in this State. There
seems to be different policies, one sug-
gested by this Board and others by differ-
ent agencies in the State. We have re-
cently set up what I think will be the
answer to some of these different policies
between several State agencies and that is
the Natural Resources Department whose
function is to coordinate these differences
and come up with policies that do not im-
pinge one upon another.

I

There has to be understanding. There
has first to be knowledge of what kind of
priorities we want and if the information
is not available then we have to get that
information. If the Hill report is not com-
plete and we don't know how much water we
have we have to find out and I don't think
the people of this state will hesitate to
spend whatever money is necessary to find