BOARD01955

• Board Meeting Date: 3/21/1973
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

Now those fellows over there on the south side of the river, they are
just in the same situation as those fellows up on Savery-Pot Hook.
They didn't have any water to irrigate with last year. Some of them
never gOta drop. One friend of mine said he had water for eleven
days out of the year. They are buying hay at $70 a ton now. They
are just in the same shape that you fellows are up there in Wyoming. I
. There is a lot of good land over there that could be irrigated if
we had water for it.

But getting back to the oil shale, if economy needs the energy so
badly that we need this oil shale, they are going to have to start
on it and start on it pretty quick. Because it is going to take ten
years to build that project so that they can get water for the people
that will'work in that oil shale. And it is pretty near impossible,
fellows, to clean that water up after twenty-one towns have dumped
their sewage in it.. I know because I tried it. We spent hundreds of
thousands of dollars there at Rifle trying to clean it.up and we
still haven't got anything that is fit to drink. And you can't expect
15,000 people to come in there and put up with that kind of a situ-
ation because they are not going to do it. And we are going to have
an oil shale industry, I think. I came there fifty years ago and
they said they were going to have to have an oil shale industry with-
in ten years. Of course, they say it is going to be ten years yet,
but it is going to take ten years to build that West Divide project.
And if the United States government wants oil shale, they are going
to have to put some kind of pressure to get this West Divide done.

We have a lot of natural resources in that country over there within
about eight or ten miles. There is one vein of coal 400 feet thick.
There is one 50 feet thick and one 24 feet thick, besides dozens of
them 3 and 4 feet thick. To say nothing about uranium and vanadium
over there. Of course, they are not running the vanadium now and
uranium over there now. They have so much of it they don't need it,
but they still have more vanadium and uranium up there in that
mountain than they have ever dug out.of.1t. And they are going to
. have to have it one of these days. They closed that mill down years
ago and had to come back and put it in again to supply the country.
That is where the uranium came from for "the first atomic bomb. It
came from that mill up there at Rifle. With all these natural I
resources over there that we have we are going to have water to
develop them. That is a sure thing. And this West Divide project
and that Crystal River water is the only place that we have left to
go to.

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