BOARD02112

• Board Meeting Date: 1/9/1978
• Description: Agenda, Minutes, Resolution
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

things, and it is what it is doing. that bothers us. That translates
into an annual loss in Colorado of 388,000. acre-feet, and that's a very
significant amount of water. All of the Upper Basin States are caught
in the same bind. What we are trying to figure out is a way to
approach what we consider a grave injustice being perpetrated against
the Upper Basin States.

I

We have known and protested this for twenty years, long before Glen
Canyon was ever constructed, but we never had substantiating data to
back us up until recently. As part of the long negotiations .on the
Central Arizona project, the Upper Basin States insisted that there
must be an accounting of the use of water in the. Lower Basin. We have
always had an accounting for the uses in the Upper Basin, but we have
not seen an official document which accounts for the consumptive use
of water in the Lower Basin. That accounting is extremely critical to
the Mexican Treaty, because the Colorado River Compact says the burden
of the Mexican Treaty shall be borne equally.

One of the principal things that the Upper Basin States insisted upon
was the provision in the Act of 1968 authorizing the Central Arizona
project to account for the use of Water in both pas~ns. The Act
provides that for every five-year period, the Secretary of the Interior
shall make a report to the Congress and to the governors of the
respective states accounting for the consumptive uses and losses of
water in the Upper and Lower Basins. . We received the first five-year
report recently.

It has been bandied about by conservationists and others that the price
of the support of Colorado for the Central Arizona project was the
authorization of projects in Colorado. That was not a fact. Our
price was Title VI of the Act of 1968 which establishes the accounting
and also sets forth the criteria for the operation of Glen Canyon and
Hoover Dam. . That was our price. The projects were put in as an after-
thought. The insertion of the projects occurred on one Sunday after-
noon in Washington, but after we had agreed to the other major
provisions. That is a very critical title to the Upper Basin. For
the firSt 'time, it spelled out some of the rights that were ambiguous
in the Colorado River Compact; namely, how do we treat storage in Glen
Canyon and under what article of the compact. is the water stored?

I

The recent report now documents what we have long claimed: that the
Lower Basin is using far more water than it is entitled to, and. yet no
assessment is being made against the Lower. Basin under the Mexican.
Treaty as the compact calls. for. In assessing the needs under the.
Mexican Treaty, the compact states that it shall be borne equally among
.the Upper and Lowe.r" Basin, if there is a deficiency. The deficiency
does not exist until each basin is using its full amount of water or

-:-51,:,