BOARD01669

• Board Meeting Date: 1/14/1970
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

I

whether the proposed contracts with entities
developing the Page powerplant adequately
protected the Upper Basin. We were not able
to get a look at the contracts until late
last fall. At that time we did get a com-
mitment from the Secretary that he wouldn't
sign the contracts until we had had an
opportunity to look at them. When we did
look at them our suspicions were confirmed.

I

We had a meeting of the legal committee
of the Upper Colorado River Commission. As
a result of that committee meeting certain
recommendations were made to the commission
which met later on the same week. The com-
mission adopted those recommendations and
asked for additional language in the con-
tracts which the commission felt would
adequately protect the Upper Basin. Within
three or four days after the commission
meeting there was a meeting in Washington
with Assistant Secretary Smith and his staff,
attended by most of the congressional dele-
gations, both Senators and Congressmen, from
the four Upper Basin states. It was not a
satisfactory meeting. The Secretary refused
to give any further assurances. It was his
position that the language already in the
contracts did adequately protect the upper
Basin against the future claims of the
Indians. It was the unanimous position of
the representatives of the Upper Basin that
it did not, and that it would be a relatively
simple matter to add the kind of language we
wanted: that if the Secretary was sincere in
his reiterations that he did not propose to
violate the compact there should be no real
problem in adding the language. The Secre-
tary obtained a solicitor's opinion which
said that the present language was adequate.

Congressman Aspinall pointed out that
solicitors and secretaries come and go and
that sometimes the opinion of one solicitor
was not shared by his successor.