BOARD01955

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

the federal funding aspect goes of those five western Colorado proj-
ects should be funded so that tney deliver water simultaneously with
the Central Arizona Project. As far as the five projects are con-
cerned and this board is concerned, the five projects should have
funding requested simultaneously. The actual funding by the United
StatES Congress may be out of the hands of these gentlemen, the Governor I
and the director. I would like to request that their funding be
requested simultaneously.

I think that we should try to point out to our congressional delegation
the history. We should also, I think, try to point out to the con-
gressional delegation the importance of the western slope projects.
I think that we should recognize that the projects may not be built
as originally envisioned by the Bureau of Reclamation or the Colorado
River Water Conservation District. I believe that if you start at the
Basa~t project or the Silt project or the West Divide project today
by the time they were constructed they would not be the project as
now on the drawing board. The use of water is changing.

As regards oil shale in relationship to water resources from Colorado
.and the White River basins. we should try to get to somebody who
understands how much water is going to be needed. The United States
today is adjudicating in the state courts today. They have not yet
withdrawn the claims for 200,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water
>with a 19l6 date.

So I do think this, Mr. Chairman, that the whole problem that we are
discussing here today is probably a microcosm of a much larger prob-
lem. If I were going back to Washington or if I would have any input
to what Felix and the Governor are going to do, I think I would try
to handle this short-term problem in as intensive a manner as I could
and try to influence the Administration and the Congress in a postive
way to fund the study and construction of these projects. In the
long-term, we are looking at a long-term problem and we lost a great
deal of our influence when we lost Wayne Aspinall and Senator Allott.
.And toward the point of the long-term problem, I think that the state
of Colorado and perhaps the four Upper Basin states should as soon
as possible, and we should have started about ten years ago, begin a
very deep and comprehensive liaison in Washington, D. C. Felix and
I talked about it. I talked about it with the state engineer. I
talked about it with Ival Goslin. I talked about it with represen-
tatives of the other three Upper Basin states. I think that what we
are addressing ourselves here today is a short-term aspect of a very
long-range problem. I think that maybe the handwriting was on the

I

-77-