BOARD01106

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

as a sovereign state, we have an obligation
under that compact to comply with it.

I

In compliance with it, it is probably
going to mean a great deal of sacrifice or
may mean a great sacrifice in the near
future if we don't work out some way to
liquidate this debt. As we all know, the
only way we can liquidate it is actually
by almost an act of the Gods by filling
up the reservoir, Elephant Buttes, and
thereby wiping out our debt. Then we are
faced with the uphill proposition year in
and year out that we are probably going
to experience a steady indebtedness which
mayor may not reach the same proportions
that we are already obligated.

I have discussed in the last four or
five years on every conceivable occasion
and every conce ivable opportunity this
subject with the Governors of New Mexico
and Texas to see if we couldn't sit down
at least on an informal basis -- and review
the terms of this compact and find the
inequities and agree upon them and try to
spend some of our financial resources in
trying to work out ways to make the compact
more fair to everybody involved. I am sorry
to say that those efforts have met with
little or no success.

I

We have had our problems in deliveries
of water out of reservoirs here at times
of the year when it causes us considerable
distress and due to the fact that we have
only one vote against two, we are seldom
successful in even regulating the times
of delivery, although we have had some
success in that respect. But the thing that
worries me most is the kind of letters I
get and I would like to read this one to
you. This is a letter from the executive
offices, State of New Mexico, from the
Honorable Edwin L. Mechem, Governor of
New Mexico, dated December of 1961.

"Dear Steve: Preliminary compu-
tations indicate that Colorado