BOARD01858

• Board Meeting Date: 1/12/1967
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

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acre-feet and replace this white area with
the black which was in storage. All we do
is stop the excess water before it gets to
Lee Ferry and then we fill in these blaru,
spaces with that stored water. Yet we have
people here in Colorado who say 'Why did you
construct Glen Canyon?'. The reason is
simple arithmetic.

This is the problem then with the com-
pact and why we had to have Section 602. We
have reviewed rather exhaustively the minutes
of the colorado River Compact. They have all
been preserved with the exception, I think,
of the third meeting of the compact - was it
the third, IvaI?"

MR. GOSLIN:

"It \~as the second, Heeting 26."

MR. SPARKS:

"The second. Anyway those records were
destroyed on purpose apparently, because we
have not been able to run down a copy of
those minutes. In any event, all of the
compact commissioners agreed that the upper
Basin must store water in times when the
river flow was high in order to release water
when the river flow was low. But the compact
didn't say this. There is no mention in the
compact about the right to long-term holdover
storage. But there is a provision in the com-
pact which says the Lower Ba5in shall not
require nor the Upper Basin shall not withhold
water which cannot be put to beneficial con-
sumptive use. This simply means, if you
interpret that Article III (e) by itself, that
the Lower Basin could use all of the water
when the Central Arizona project goes on the
river, (they can use most of it today actual-
ly). So for years we have been at an impasse
on that particular section of the compact.
We say, in the Upper Basin, that you have to
read the whole compact to determine what it
means and that you can't put an isolated
interpretation on Article III (e) . We must
store this water above this green line~we
have nothing left in the Upper Basin, no
dependable supply.

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