BOARD01321

• Board Meeting Date: 3/7/1961
• Description: Minutes and Resolution
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

......,vu

we have all been working on for sometime and I
don't think we've had the final solution yet,
but I'd like to have Larry report on the Glen
Canyon filling criteria. Larry."

MR. SPARKS,

"Gentlemen, there is not a whole lot new
to report on this subject. I was in Washing-
ton two weeks ago and took the matter up with
some of the officials of the Department of the
Interior. The predominant thinking in the De-
partment of Interior still remains that the
Upper Basin should make up so-called power
deficiencies to the Lower Basin which it is
claimed will occur as a result of the opera-
tion of Glen Canyon in connection with Hoover
Dam. We are not able to concur to any extent
wi th this type of thinking. We believe that
the thinking is ridiculous, and that, by no
stretch of the imagination, we signed a com-
pact in 1922 to deliver power to the Lower
Basin. We signed a compact to deliver water,
and that delivery of water we intend to make.

I

I think that we in Colorado and in the
Upper Basin must resist any attempt to rewrite
the compact to place the burden upon the Upper
Basin to deliver power to the Lower Basin. We
are now in a position where the tail is attempt-
ing to wag the dog. The purpose of entering
into the power contracts at Hoover Dam was to
assist in the repayment of that structure.
Apparently there is some thought on the part
of people in the Bureau of Reclamation that
such contracts now create a dominant interest
on the Colorado River, that is, the power con-
tractors.

Mr. Kuiper and Mr. Gildersleeve, particu-
larly, have done some two years or better of
intensive research on this problem. No matter
how we turn the question, we come to a conclu-
sion that this is an incredible concept to
burden the Upper Basin with the fulfillment
of contracts to which we are not a party.

I

I want to call your attention to some por-
tions of a memorandum which Mr. Kuiper has