BOARD01033

• Board Meeting Date: 11/13/1963
• Description: Minutes
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

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I think that will give you a little history
of why this was built. And I would say that
the farmers in the Arkansas Valley have spent
millions of dollars over the early history of
this thing trying to protect their rights and
also paying off damages.

In 1927, I think, the Governor of the
state of Colorado and the Governor of the
State of Kansas appointed men to try to re-
solve the dispute and the outgrowth of that
was the Kansas-Colorado Compact. Out of that
came the building of John Martin and the opera-
tion of John Martin. When there is a conser-
vation pool it comes under the jurisdiction
of the compact commission. They run it. The
water is distributed below the dam by agree-
ment. Three days before it becomes empty, it
goes under the jurisdiction of the State Engi-
neer. Right along that line I have asked Mr.
Sparks, on lines 16, 17, 18 and 19 of the
proposed legislation, where it says 'The rights
of irrigators in Colorado and Kansas to those
waters available to them under the terms of
the Arkansas River compact shall not be dimin-
ished nor impaired by anything contained in
this Act', to put in there after the word
'Compact', 'or under the state laws of the
respective states'. That is, that it be run
under the law of the State of Colorado as far
as Colorado is concerned and under the law of
Kansas as far as Kansas is concerned.

I

As I see these lines, 16, 17, 18 and 19,
there could be no loss whatsoever under those
terms because if there was water in the con-
servation pool, it would be run as it always
has been run. There would be no changes.
But it's when it is not in the conservation
pool, when it comes under the jurisdiction of
the State Engineer, that I want the adequate
protection for the irrigators to appear there
also.

I think the crux of the whole thing is,
how long is the dam going to last? I don't