BOARD02551

• Board Meeting Date: 8/11/1965
• Description: Minutes and Resolution
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

Lower Basins. '7ithout that storage then we
couldn I t come up with as high a figure as is
contained in the report.

I

The second problem, in addition to our
own shortage which is going to occur no
matter what, is trying to account for water
in the Lower Basin. v7e have previously
discussed squatters' illegal actions on the
federal lands along the lower Colorado
River; the uses of the Lower Basin tribu-
taries; the evaporation from Lower Basin
reservoirs; and other factors which go in
to deplete the river in the Lower Basin. We
have had a hard time deciding how we should
get at this accounting problem. Actually
we are not so much interested in the account-
ing if, in fact, our obligation to deliver
water at Lee Ferry is limited to 75,000,000
acre-feet. The compact says this, so it
appears to us to be the least that we could
possibly deliver, the guaranteed 75.000,000.
So we have assumed, in these studies. that
this is the full extent of the obligation of
the Upper Basin; that is, to deliver only
75,000,000 acre-feet in every consecutive
ten-year period. If we go beyond that obli-
gation, the 6.3 and the corresponding 5.6
are no longer valid figures. We would have
to take a further reduction in Upper Basin
uses. This. we say, we cannot do under any
circumstances. We are already short enough.

I

So this \"as the second problem - how do
we get around the accounting problem and the
l~xican Treaty obligation? Are we going to
fight about it forever among the Upper and
Lower Basin states? vfuen we submitted our
comments on the original Pacific Southwest
Water Plan, Governor Love submitted them
some two years ago, he made this perfectly
clear in his letter - that by some method we
had to have an accounting for Lower Basin
uses so that our obligation would be limited
to 75,000,000.

Following the Arizona vs. California