BOARD00736

• Board Meeting Date: 7/18/1958
• Description: Minutes and Resolution
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

1024

There is so much work to do by way of lay-
ing the ground work, your Colorado Congress be-
lieves that it would be unfortunate to delay it
at all.

Now the difficulty we have had'in the past
is that whenever the Water Conservation Board,
through it's Chief Engineer, in whom those who
know him have complete confidence, or when the
Upper Basin Commission through their engineers,
in whom we have confidence, would come up with
a result of any kind, someone displeased with
that result would have a tendency to say "We
have been sold 'down the river'; we were not
heard on this; why weren't'we present when
these studies were being made? Nobody took us
into consideration; the Soil Conservation Ser-.
vice came i_ in here with a c'omprehensi ve plan
of the area and did not adequately present it
to us". Nobody can hear Mr. Chalmers without
realizing what a conscientious, hard working man
he is.

I

I know that Mr. Gildersleeve will tell you
he has been handicapped time and again by not
having had the opportunity to review his work
with people from various areas of the State who
do have confidence in his work. If it were
possible-for us to have this committee, imple-
mented and working, come back to your next
meeting with a detailed program we would be making
real progress. The Water Congress didn't think
they could.go on with any more detailed suggestions
without the approval in principle of this much of
the plan. Unless that is done, we have definitely
lost time.

We were very much aware of what Mr. Peterson
has said. This is short notice but the thing we
had iri mind was if the Board would, today, adopt
the principle that we are going to appoint a com-
mittee to work directly under this Board and have
that committee come back with specific and compact
recommendations of how to implement this program, I
then we would have gained perhaps thirty days or
perhaps a life time, because if we don't have a
program under way by the first of the year, we
may lose further appropriations for the Upper -
Basin projects for Lord knows how long. It is