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Water Conservancy District. Mr. Doerfer: My name is Lloyd E. Doerfer and I am a member of the Mancos Water Conservancy District, Mancos, Colorado. In the late 1940's the Bureau of Reclamation constructed the Jackson Gulch Dam above Mancos, Colorado, as a storage reservoir for the Mancos I Water Reclamation Project. The people in our area voted to sign the repayment contract so that this project could be constructed. We have continued to pay our share of the project costs to the United States government. In 1972, the people of the Mancos Valley were dismayed to discover there was a prior claim to the waters of the Mancos River. I am referring to the claim filed on behalf of the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute Indian Tribes in Water Division 7 of the State of Colorado. Any person who has ever irrigated and been involved in water matters down through the years must be aware of the shock which hit our community when we discovered that there might be a prior right to the waters of the Mancos River - especially since we have, in good faith, entered into a repay- ment contract with the United States and have been paying for our proj- ect all these years. Apparently, if the Indian tribes are granted number one water rights on the Mancos River, the people who will be most damaged by such a claim will be the people of our area. If the tribes receive a number one priority water right for their lands and build the necessary diversion facilities to put the right to beneficial use, there will be no water left for the community of Mancos and the surrounding farmers and ranchers. We appreciate the attitude which has been expressed by not only the Indian tribes, but also by the other water conservancy districts in our area to attempt, through cooperation, to solve this problem by the con- struction of the Animas-La Plata and Dolores Water Reclamation Projects. By building these two projects, the United States government has the opportunity to provide a practical solution to critical social and economic problems that will otherwise develop as a result of the estab- lishment of Indian water rights in Southwestern Colorado. In our judgment, it is the duty of the United States government to resolve this problem because they helped create it. First, the government waited for 100 years after the Ute Reservations were established before it made any attempt to quantify the water rights I to which the tribes might be entitled. Second, the government built the Mancos Reclamation Project and bound the water users of that project to a repayment obligation without analyzing the effect of potential Indian water rights on the project. If it sounds like we feel we have been wronged, it is because that is the feeling in our community. If it sounds like we feel something should be done about it, it is because the situation is critical. We realize that both the Animas-La Plata and Dolores Projects will do for -42-