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<br />B-15 <br /> <br /> <br />002'192 <br /> <br />Department of Commerce <br /> <br />Mr. Roland R. Raetz, Regional Hydrologist, National Weather <br />Service, Sslt Lake City, Utah, I would like to discuss something <br />other than was in the report, Wes was talking about not enough water. <br />I would like to mention too much water and this is in the flash flood <br />basins that we have. We have a lot of them in the West. Just recently <br />the instrumental technology has become available where we can take <br />these small basins, like Rapid City, South Dakota, we made a study on <br />this, put four of the new type gages that record on a millimeter rain <br />fall, and they report every time this occurs by radio on site or relay <br />and then this is picked up in a little mini-computer and updates the <br />basin continuously and automatically gives you an alarm. The alarm <br />is in a 24-hour station and in the case of Rapid City, where 237 people <br />died, we could have given them two hours additional warning and we have <br />said major disastrous flood coming and we might have saved quite a <br />few of these people. So what I'm really saying now is I do not know <br />in other agencies what the grant programs are to local communities <br />and since we're on a ZBB in the Weater Service, we cannot afford to <br />establish these, I would say roughly in a small basin it costs about <br />a maximum of $20,000 to establish one. I would like to ask you <br />people to look at your grant programs in small communities because <br />I don't even know what Commerce can do yet and Dr. Haile is trying <br />to find that out this week in Washington. For report as distributed <br />see PART C - ATTACHMENTS. <br /> <br />State of California <br /> <br />, <br /> <br />Mr, Arthur C, Gooch, Deputy Chief, Division of Planning, Department <br />of Water Resources, I would like to say I'm sorry that I couldn't be <br />here during all of your deliberatlons. I understand that Bob Miller <br />made the welcoming remarks since California and the Department of <br />Water Resources are the host agency. I would take a little exception <br />to his profound remarks that California is green, golden, and poor, <br />but we will let thst pass by, I would also like to express the regrets <br />of Ron Robie and also Don Owen who was to be here today, but not being <br />able to makf it, that also ties into Proposition 13 with the Legislature <br />considering many matters at this time. Changing almost hourly in a <br />particular position I will touch on that in a moment later on in my <br />presentatior. One of the significant events in California for that <br />last reporting period has to do with the end of the drought. A very <br />very severe drought for the last two years. It's dominated all of <br />the Department's water-related activities, people were shifted around, <br />speclal forces were marshalled to exchange water to meet these crises <br />when they came up. Fortunately this year we did have a dramatic <br />reversal of meteorologicsl events that brought this about. We did <br />learn a great many lessons from it. That is, of course, that water is <br />a finite resource and must be conserved, protected, controlled, to <br />the maximum use of the people possible. It will resolve in better <br />management planning in the future, I do believe, and help us cope <br />with the inevitable problems that seem to come up from time to time. <br />