BOARD02551

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

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before we encourage Central Arizona as a
project.

I

About thirty years ago the Supreme Court
heard a case in which the Central Arizona
was brought into the picture and Mr. Justice
Brandeis estimated that the Central Arizona
would require 4,500,000 acre-feet of water.
That's a lot of water and it isn't going to
be satisfied with just a dribble from the
Upper Basin states. The dangers of figuring
this thing too close, of creating the Central
Arizona Project, without an ample supply of
water to be used in the Central Arizona, is
a dangerous thing to the storage water of
the Upper Basin.

I

paragraph (e) of Article III says that
the upper Basin states shall not withhold
water and the Lower Basin states shall not
require water that they cannot use for
domestic and agricultural purposes. So
what does that do to the storage of water
in the Upper Basin? If they build a Central
Arizona no one can say that they don't need
water for domestic purposes and that they
don't need water for agricultural purposes,
and that they have the facilities to use
that water. I brought that point up at the
time the storage projects were under dis-
cussion by the Senate committee and they
brought in Mr. Bennett from the Interior
Department to discuss whether, under para-
graph (e) of Article III, the Lower Basin
could, I'll use this word, it wasn't used at
the time but it's a more explanatory term,
'raid' the Upper Basin storage to supply
their domestic needs in the Lower Basin if
Central Arizona is completed. Mr. Bennett
made a strong statement; it's a matter of
record; and the water lawyers who were there,
representing the Upper Basin states, all of
them brilliant lawyers - Senator Milliken
from Colorado, Arthur watkins from Utah,
Joseph O'Mahoney from wyoming, and Clinton
Anderson, who is not a lawyer but a former