BOARD02623

• Board Meeting Date: 8/1/1974
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

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consumptive use. If they change these uses.and~change the points
of diversions through court procedure, the court limits them to the
amount of previous consumptive use. This simply makes them purchase
twice as much water as is necessary in order to keep the river whole,
but the river doesn't change at all. There are many cases pending
in the courts today for changes in points of diversion. Some are
being contested. The law provides adequate safeguards to protect
other appropriators.

On the problem of salinity, I was interested to note that the state
of California in its studies of the impact of the oil shale industry
on the salinity of the Colorado River figured that the oil shale
industry would be responsible for creating less salinity in the Colo-
rado River than now exists. The reason for that is that California
figures like we do that the oil shale industry will buy some agri-
cultural rights. Those agricultural rights today are contributing
heavily to the salinity of the Colorado River. When they are taken
off the river and none of the water is returned, California believes
that the oil shale industry will have a beneficial effect upon the
salinity of the Colorado River for that reason.

Mr. Stapleton: Do you agree with that?

Mr. Sparks: Yes, I don't think there is any question about it.

Mr. Ten Evck: It is the return flow that is eliminated!

Mr. Sparks: It is the return flow that is doing the damage to the
river today. If you eliminate those return flows, you obviously
reduce the salinity.

Mr. Sta.2!eton: I take it the premise is we have enough water in
state that agriculture can also grow. So this land is not going
be taken out of production, is it?

Mr. Sparks: We have roughly 130,000 acre-feet of water which is not
being used today available in the Grand Valley area from Ruedi and
Green Mountain. So we can't see any serious detrimental effects to
the agricultural industry in the Grand Valley area. However, when
you take a large amount of water out of the White River, that has to
be replaced from some other source on the Colorado River. We think
that will have a considerable impact upon the agricultural industry.

the
to

Mr. Stapleton: Can we get back to the water needed for electrical
power? Can anybody help us on that?

Mr. Rolly Fischer: Mr. Chairman, we are not sure of the current
accuracy about numbers, but in conversations with the industry and
what literature we can dig up it looks like for each thousand mega-
watts of thermal or coal-fired power between 18 and 20,000 acre-feet
of water would be totally consumed per year. With wet scrubbers
which we think will be required by the Environmental Protection

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