BOARD01106

• Board Meeting Date: 2/3/1962
• Description: Minutes
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

National Guard. We are delighted that
he could be back here. He is eminently
familiar with the problem and the pro-
posed solution and I know the Board and
you will be anxious to hear from him at
this time.

(Applause)

I

MR. SPARKS:

I would like to put in focus the
problem which is before this Board today
and give you a brief resume of what the
situation is presently pertaining to this
Closed Basin project.

The Board is faced with a proposition
of the immediate future of making some
decision pertaining to the investigation
and project studies that have been made
to date.

As you know, our problem with the
Rio Grande Compact is because of the so-
called Closed Basin area. If it were
not for that Closed Basin, we would have
no problem as far as the Rio Grande Compact
is concerned, but because most of the water
of the Rio Grande in this valley is diverted
into the Closed Basin and does not return,
the problem is thereby created.

Several or many hundreds of thousands
of acre-feet of water annually are evaporated
or lost by transpiration and evaporized
in the Closed Basin drain annually. This
is the crux of the problem.

With reference to the Rio Grande
Compact, to be perfectly frank, we are
overdiverting amounts of water to which I
we are entitled. Now, there has been a
lot of talk of renegotiation of the
compact. I do not think that event will
ever occur. We have a law Which we mUst
work under. So many years ago the people
here began looking -- the people here in
the valley began looking for some way to
develop additional water supplies. We