BOARD00725

• Board Meeting Date: 1/18/1973
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

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Mr. Saunders: They did and they felt that what Sparks has done is
very good. We discussed it further and on tha:: basis we thought it
would be undesirable to do anything which might upset all the hun-
dred years of legal interpretations we have had. And to that end,
we read the pages of article XVI of the constitution worded as he did
and added some language. The language which could be added. is very
much like what you have in the photostat that I handed you, just
insert an additional sentence, "That beneficial use shall include
maintaining all or a portion of the natural flow of a stream for
recreational or other values to mankind by a statutory agency empowered
by law to appropriate for such use." We .thought that the advantage
of such statutory language would be that it would leave undisturbed
the constitution and decisions that we have. That it would make it
clear that it was not necessary to actually physically divert water
for appropriation to occur and that the proliferation of appropriations
which Larry is very much afraid of, and these lawyers felt just the
same way he did about it, would be precluded by allowing this to be
done only by a state agency. It is also I think what Cleland Feast
has in mind that we should have some state agency evaluating it to
the extent to which these waters are required for ecological purposes
so that we might not have, to use an illustration of Larry Sparks,
a hundred second feet appropriated in a particular area where they
might have that much of a flood but only really needed eight second
feet to do the whole job because that is what the stream flow is down
to anyway.

Now for the last question that the Chairman asked, How do we get to
all of this at a meeting of this kind? There are so many things
happening so fast at the legiSlature that it occurred to me that the
principles here are pretty plain. I think we all have agreed that
we would like to make it possible to find some way of preserving the
stream flows where it could be done without impairing people's
already existing rights, including those that Clarence Burr is con-
cerned about. And that it would be better oernaps to leave this
finally to this board. in the hands of the chairman and its director
and of course, its attorney, to actually decide on how to implement
this~ We felt that we should make a real effort to have a statutory
amendment that would do the jOb if possible. And we thought of the
same thing that Sam Maynes came up with. that we could have a very
quick test of the extent to which this might be effective. If it
were not effective and the Supreme Court ruled against it, we would
have ample time for a constitutional amendment prior to the next
general election in 1974 in any event. And we might learn a great
deal about how to do this by making our first attempt through the

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