BOARD00444

• Board Meeting Date: 1/11/1961
• Description: Minutes
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

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Secretary to execute such agreements. In that
way we lose nothing and they lose nothing.

I briefly want to disclose (Mr. Sparks
made use of the blackborad and chalk to illus-
trate this part of his report) our big criticism
of the filling criteria. This has been evolved
primarily by members of our staff, Mr. Kuiper
and Mr. Gildersleeve. They are working in con-
junction with the engineers from the other Upper
Basin states. This is our great criticism of
the filling criteria, in addition to trying to
make us provide revenues for the Lower Basin.
We think the criteria itself is unfair in the
way it is proposing to arrive at these deficien-
cies. For this reason the Hoover power con-
tracts are based upon an impossible condition.
They were based upon a flow of the river which
does not now exist and which has never existed.
The assumption was incorrect at the time the
power contracts were made. That possibility was
fully recognized. No one can foresee the future
flow of a river but the contracts were set, based
upon the historic flows of the river up through
. what year was that?"

MR, KUIPER:

"The studies were made in 1929 and they
assumed flows up through 1938."

MR. SPARKS:

"But based upon historic flows which had
occurred prior to that time."

MR. KUIPER:

"That's right."

MR. SPARKS:

"And that was a much higher flow - the aver-
age flow was much higher than we now know exists
in light of more recent history. So under no
circumstances could firm power of 4,200,000,000
KW annually, or something like that, be gener-
ated without Glen Canyon. Yet in the criteria
they have set this impossible level as firm
power generation at HOOVer. We sayan impossible
level, and when any peaks would occur in the
filling, we'll say of Glen Canyon, they are re-
leased to try to make this impossible goal. It
means that you constantly drain Glen Canyon to