BOARD00531

• Board Meeting Date: 5/7/1969
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

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groundwater aquifer in the Closed Basin and
the Rio Grande River. There is no clay dike
barrier which separates the Closed Basin
from the river as has been supposed before.
Then you go on to say the implication is that
wells pumped in the Closed Basin can and will
affect the flow of the Rio Grande River.

This kind of intimates that water which
is pumped out for Texas and New Mexico will
not affect the water tables but those that
are used by local people will. I think you
should elaborate on this. There is a ground-
water divide there that crosses the river
and part of that water flows toward the sump
while part of it is tributary to the river.
That in the Closed Basin has not been con-
sidered tributary to the river because the
flow is toward the sump area."

MR. 140ULDEI\,

"Under the current practice of water
management that is true. There is a ground-
water divide. That means that there is a
hump of water between the stream and the
Closed Basin. Now this was one of the major
reasons why some suspected that there was a
clay dike; that part of the water that was
being diverted returned to the stream but
the major part of it went into the Closed
Basin.

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This is just a matter of man's activi-
ties in the area. If they had not diverted
water into the Closed Basin, then water from
the Rio Grande would flow into the Closed
Basin and ultimately be consumed by evapo-
transpiration, consumptive use of water,
returning it to the atmosphere. However,
we've fOund there is no barrier in between.
That pumpage in the Closed Basin itself can
have an effect providing, and this is an
important point, that the water is not sal-
vaged from this one million acre-feet of
nonbeneficial use.

Does that help, Quincy?"