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serve collectively among our fourt.een members is somewhere around 3 million people. They use, on an annual average, about 150 billion gallons of water per year. If I did my math right, that's about 500,000 acre- feet.. Normally the quantity of flow in the Missouri River is more than adequate to supply those needs. It is only during the low flow extremes that water supply can become threatened. Those do occur from time to time. This is a good time, January is a typical time when they might occur during the non-navigation win- ter months when, compounded by ice jams, the river can be driven down to nearly starvation levels for our water intakes. We've had a couple of specific occurrences of that in 1963 and again in the winter of 1980/1981. Our Association has pointed out in the past at conferences such as this that we believe a flow of 15,000 cfs at Gavins Point would keep us out of trouble even during these low-flow months. Obviously, the other extreme we get concerned about are flood flows. During the fall of 1986, on my end of the river at least near St. Louis, we were faced with flood flows and river stages that exceeded the 1973 stages by over two feet. They even exceeded the 1951 record flood stage by over a foot. We were very close, on that end of the river, to curtailing water sup- ply operation due to these flood flows and due to these stages. It was critical. I realize that flood was caused by downstream precipitation and was not a result of reservoir releases. I am not sure to what extent those kinds of events can be impacted by reservoir operation. The point I would like to make is that when we are that critical in those extreme high stages, even a dif- ference of a few tenths of a foot could make the dif- ference between us remaining in full service or curtailing operations. So to whatever extent reservoir control can mitigate our problems, we would urge that be done. The other issue I want to talk about is water quality. I think the quality of the Missouri River, from our perspective in t.erms of natural contaminants as well as man made pollutants, is quite good. During the past ten years especially, there has been a lot of attention focused by federal and state water supply regulators, 42 I water suppliers themselves, and even the public on the issue of pollutants in our water supply streams. In 1978 the U.S. EPA branded rivers like the Mis- souri as vulnerable to contamination by priority pol- lutants. Priority pollutants are the list of unpronounceable compounds with three letter abbre- viations mentioned in the Clean Water Act. Our as- sociation was able to conduct monitoring during the 1980s looking for the pollutants we were vulnerable to. I think the study was reassuring. We didn't find a high occurrence of those pollutants, in fact we found almost none at all. When we did find them, we had very low concentrations. We may be vulnerable, but we do not have a background level of pollution in the Missouri River. The question has been asked concerning the recent one million gallon oil spill into the Monongahela River near Pittsburgh. The question has been asked, "Could this same thing happen here and would water supplies be shut down?" The answer is yes, it could happen here. Would it shut down our water supplies? We frankly don't know. We think we have a great advan- tage in the volume of flow and in the velocity of flow in the Missouri, and we would hope the problems here would not be as severe as those in the Pittsburgh area. Here again, if faced with a water quality emergency due to spill or inflow from other basins, it's possible, especially during low flow periods, an increase in res- ervoir releases would help our problems. We've heard a couple of times today about the ETSI pipeline. Our association took a position a few years hack in opposition to that project, and some other similar proposals. Not that we are against other uses of water, but we feared the project from its precedent setting potential. We urge interstate compacts or other cooperative agreements of that nature to form an over- all management plan for the Missouri so that diversion projects and uses can be adequately weighed. In conclusion, all I can say to reservoir operators is just look downstream. I was happy to see the data being collected in the downstream basin. Perhaps that data can be used effectively in managing the reser- voirs. Just look downstream. If we've got a spill or are in trouble, perhaps releases could help. Thank you.