BOARD02551

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

On the average of these ten-year periods,
the lowest production was 11,831,800 which
occurred in the 1931-1940 decade. In 1956
to 1964 the mean, which is the average amount
of water for each year, was 12,031,500. Now
you can't say those decades do not represent
the present shortage of water because they do.
If you break them down and subtract from them
the 75,000,000 obligation, which is rigid,
you'll not have enough water to supply the
present needs of the Upper Colorado River
Basin. In the 1921-1964, and that included
a very wet decade, the mean flow of the river
was 13,951,000. In the 1930-1964, a 35-year
period, the mean flow of the river, the virgin
flow, was 12,967,000. In the 1914-1964 period,
which is fifty years, you'll have a mean flow
of 14,551,000. In that year we would have
had, not 7,500,000 which we should have, but
we would have gotten fairly close to it.

Taking that record and we have no reason
that I can See for making an estimate on any-
thing else than those long records of the
production of water, we are short of water
right now. Oh, \~e might squeeze out as much
as a million acre-feet over and above the
actual use we are mcl_ing of the water but
that's getting down too close to the supply
of water to make any kind of an accurate
estimate. So I think unless the Central
Arizona can indicate and prove that it can
get water imported to tcl_e .care of Central
Arizona we ought to close the door and we
ought not figure down to the last drop of
water that we might have in the river. There
just isn't enough water, there isn't enough
leeway, even though you figure that maybe we
could develop a million acre-feet of water.
That's getting too close in the serious matter
we are facing at this time.

I think we ought to consider very care-
fully of standing pat on the requirement that
imported water is not only planned for but
that it is actually capable of being realized

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