BOARD01415

• Board Meeting Date: 11/1/1978
• Description: Agenda, Minutes, Resolution
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

The type of work that we are doing in 'Western Colorado is slow, tedious,
and unglamorous. But I think it is the onLy future that the state has.
We are about at the end of storing water in large reservoirs. We have
heard a lot of campaign rhetoric about more storage, but the truth of
the matter is that we are about through. We have about reached the end
of our water supply. What we must do now is use that water in a much
more economical manner.

The encouraging thing about all the experiments we have been doing in
Western Colorado is that we have had the overwhelming cooperation of
farmers. They recognize better than anyone else the economic squeeze
that they are being caught in and that they must improve their effi-
ciency.

The message is getting across to the Bureau, and the Bureau itself has
come up with some innovative practices.

We have criticized the President's water policy, but there is one
extremely gOOd part of it, and that is his emphasis upon conservation
methods. He has directed the federal agencies to look at all conserva-
tion methods. I wholeheartedly agree with the President that we have
given too little attention to that phase in the past.

You have seen the orchards that were portrayed in the slides here today.
The traditionalmethod20f irrigating those orchards is by flood irriga-
tion. Between the tree rows, you flood the whole area. It takes a
large volume of water, and perhaps 80 to 90 percent of that water is
of no benefit to the trees.

I

So while this is a slow, unglamorous type of research, I think it is
the only future that this state has if we are to maintain an economy

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