BOARD01858 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

1 annually. This red then is what we call the 'wet water': that is, the divertible water in the Upper Basin. This is the remainder that we can actually divert at our headgates. It amounts to 5~ million acre-feet annually. We then tried to determine whether or not we could get 5~ million without ,reservoir storage. Obviously we could not. This area on the chart represents 5~ million without reservoir storage. You can see what happens. In two years there was not one drop of water available to the Upper Basin - not one drop. without reservoir storage, under the compact, we were forced to let the entire flow of the river pass Lee Ferry to make up our compact commitments. This is an intolerable situa- tion. We can't get by without water for two years, from the Colorado or from any other of our rivers. This would mean the destruc- tion of the economy of the state of Colorado. 1 We could get the 5~ million acre-feet without reservoir storage most of the time, but you can't live on water most of the time. You have to have it all of the time. When we get to other periods (pointing), critical shortages existed in the upper Basin without ~eservoir storage. These black areas indicate the shortages that occurred to the Upper Basin without reservoir storage. The reason is very obvious. We get no credit for over-delivery at Lee Ferry. when we had high years such as 1921 we couldn't store the excess waters with storage reservoirs, and they went on down the river. Each 11th year you must sub- tract from the calculations the 11th year. Well, if we over-delivered in that ten-year period it's tough, we get no credit for it. It was very obvious at the outset, and it was obvious to the compact commissioners, that we could not make the compact delivery without reservoir storage. We had to store above Lee Ferry this water which is above the green line. Then at the times the river flow de- clined we could still use our 5~ million