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- " guarantee of 75 million acre-feet of water to the Lower Ba$in arguably places a servitude on all Upper Basin storage facilities for delivery requirements to the Lower Basin, reducing their utility to the Upper Basin. As Edward Clyde explains, the consequences of several successive drought years could be disas- trous to the Upper Basin if it is obligated to use stored water to simulate "normal" flows for the Lower Basin.16 If the various uncertainties about the obligations of the Upper Basin 17 under the compact are resolved against the Upper Basin, there may be dire consequences in terms of limiting growth, managing facilities efficiently, and generation of electric power. Even favorable resolutions do not answer the ultimate question: How to build a future on the right to leftovers? The problem has not yet been presented sharply because Upper Basin uses have not approached the point where limits on water supplies from the river have f h . . 1 18 impacted realization 0 t e Upper Basin s growth potentla . The Lower Basin, already heavily developed, can make claims to a larger share of water. The understanding implicit in the agreement was that each basin should be able to develop at its own pace with a predictable supply 19 guaranteed when development occurs. But the Upper Basin states fear that the Lower Basin's "temporary" reliance on this water could ripen into neces- sity and ultimately into recognized rights. Since the water is surplus in the Upper Basin now, harm is largely hypothetical. The Upper Basin must determine how to protect itself from the threat of Lower Basin encroachment on supplies, an encroachment that could come from adverse interpretations of the law of the river combined with a growing Lower Basin dependence on the lion's share of the river's water. A traditional answer to the Upper Basin's problem has been development of more storage projects and more water-intensive U$es. Impressing the Upper - 7 -