BOARD02551

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

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MR. STAPLETON:

MR. SPARKS:

\-'

"All right, Senator, we will certainly
note that in the record.

Larry, at this point I think you may
want to continue with your discussion of
the bill."

I

"I think perhaps I can put this thing
in a different perspective in this manner.
In the first place, with regard to water
shortages, no shortage will ever exist in
the Upper Basin until such time as we curtail
our uses to make up the 75,000,000 acre-feet
of delivery at Lee Ferry. Obviously, we are
never short until we actually reduce uses.
We have never reduced any uses in the Upper
Basin. It is-our opinion those uses will
not have to be reduced until sometime around
1990. The figures that Governor Johnson has
given you here are based upon a historic
ten-year flow of the river. If you take into
consideration only that period and project
the ultimate upper Basin use, you come up
with shortages. But the actual fact is, we
have never reduced any use in the Upper Basin
to date. We are not short of water until we
do curtail uses. You can't be short anything
until it is taken away from you.

We think our studies are essentially
correct when you take into consideration
reservoir storage and project it through a
longer period of time; that is, either
through 1921-1964 or through 1914-1964.
Shortages do not occur until people are denied
water and we are not being denied any water
today.

The second point that I would like to I
make. to get this legislation back into a
more proper perspective, is that no Central
Arizona Project nor a hundred Central Arizona
projects will change the flow physically
available in the Upper Basin. There is only
one reason that we are concerned about the
Central Arizona Project or any other project