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180 The Rio Grande Compact was signed by representatives of Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and the United States in 1938. The necessary legislative approval was secured in 1939. Prior to the execution of the Compact there had been years of controversy and one interstate lawsuit in the United States Supreme Court. Among other things, the Compact provides that Colorado must make deliveries at a gauging station near the Colorado-New Mexico State Line. . New Mexico is like- ~~se required to make deliveries at San J~rcial, New Mexico. The Compact further provides that the Colorado accrued -debit shall never exceed lQO,OOO acre feet. I / For a number of years there has been a dispute between Texas and New Mexico in which Texas has claimed that New Mexico has not de- livered the water which she is required by the Compact to deliver. This resulted in a suit brought by Texas in the United States Su- preme Court in late 1951 against New Mexico and certain o~ its water users. The Court has appointed a J~ster to take testimony in this case. The first hearings are scheduled for April, 1953. The Rio Gra~de Compact requires debits and credits in water de- liveries to be computed on an annual basis. At the end of the year 1951, Colorado had a small credit. Informal and unofficial compu- tations of the 1952 deliveries show that a debit was incurred in that year in the amount of approximately 150,000 acre feet. This is sub- stantially in excess of the allowable debit. A meeting of the Rio Grande Compact Commission was held in-Santa Fe, New Mexico, February 19-21. At this meeting, there was no official computation of debits and credits because New Mexico declined to participate in such computations during the pendency of the lawsuit. However, the engineer advisers of the commissioners appear to recog- nize the fact that Colorado h~s exceeded the permissible debit. Certain statements of the representative of Texas contained the im- plied threat that Texas would seek to join Colorado as a defendant in the pending lawsuit. This situation was brought to the attention of Governor Thornton on February 25 by Deputy Attorney General Hinkley, Royce J. Tipton, Consulting Engineer for the Colorado Water Conservation Board, and Jean S. Breitenstein, Attorney for the Colorado Water Conservation Board. After such conference and with a view to show the good faith of Colorado in the matter, Governor Thornton wrote the Governors of both Texas and New Mexico stating that it was Colorado's intent to comply with its contractual obligations and that an immediate in- vestigation would be made to ascertain the cause of the 1952 debit. If Colorado can show either that the debit was the result of uncon- I trollable adverse conditions or that the debit was caused by increased . irrigation uses which will hereafter be controlled by Colorado to prevent compact violations it is probable that Colorado can stay out of the lawsuit. If Colorado is forced into the litigation and the litigation cannot be disposed of on technical grounds, then Colorado will be in a situation wherein it vall be forced to expend large sums probably' amounting to well in excess of ~lOO,OOO.OO in contesting the suit.