WSP01712 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

, , L I, I feeling when I'm reading the Summary that this is the Guinness Book , of World Records or some book of something, just let me read you a couple of profound things here. I'm sure you didn't know that "the ;, major sources of saline water are the oceans where supplies are virtually limitless." Here are some more facts, "Within the con- terminous United States, an estimated 100 billion acre-feet or 35 thousand trillion gallons of ground water are within 2,500 feet of the earth's surface." To give the proper perspective to such huge quantities of water, consider that Lake Michigan contains 1,290 trillion gallons of water and that the Mississippi River over the past 200 years has discharged 33 trillion gallons of water into the Gulf of Mexico." Those are some of the facts in the Summary. I also mentioned yesterday that there's conflict between maps in the Summary, the maps don't agree and they have taken some information for the Upper Colorado which we felt was almost preposterous because they divided the withdrawals of water by the number of people in the Upper Basin to come up with an astronomical figure of gallons per day consumptive use. We don't understand what that's suppose to be. They compare that with figures in the Northeast, use in the Northeast. If you like that kind of comparison, I guess it's alright but it doesn' t seem to make too much sense. We are going to be sending to the Water Resources Council rather extensive comments and they will be quite pointed. In fact, we have considered sending a letter to the Secretary of the Interior to the effect that we don't really think that this work ought to be printed in its present condition without extensive revision, At Cody, Wyoming, we quizzed Louis Walker about what's taking place, what they plan to do, and we didn't get very responsive remarks from him. But we did sort of get the impression that a lot of the people that work on the National Assessment have already left the Council. So when they see it needs extensive revision to make the numbers right, like he mentioned, there are a lot of the numbers that don't agree. Even though it needs this rather extensive revision, apparently they don't have the people to make the changes, We came away with the impression from Cody that they just plan to go ahead and print as is and make very few changes. We really are not sure that there's much value to this National Assessment in its present condition. So I think this is essentially what I have to say and like California said, this pretty much brings an end to our work on the National Assessment. '" 5. Consortium of Water Institutes and Centers Report The report of the Consortium of Water Institutes and Centers was presented by Professor Sol D, Resnick, Director, Water Resources Research Center, University of Arizona, Chairman. The report is in PART C - ATTACHMENTS to these minutes. B-4