AZ vs. CA:25 California Exhibits, Vol. XXV; Nos. 7501-7859

page 12

12 Lees Ferry..............................................16,660,000 Boulder Dam ........................................17,720,000 Imperial Dam........................................16,840,000 Similarly, the average annual virgin flow of the Gila River at its confluence with the Colorado River from 1895 to 1933, inclusive, would have been 1,331,000 acre feet. The average annual virgin flow of the Gila River into the Phoenix, Arizona, area is 2,359,000 acre feet. Irrigation development has reduced the escape of such flow to approximately 644,000 acre feet annually and has reduced the annual average discharge of the Gila into the Colorado River near Yuma to about 350,000 acre feet. Further development on the Gila in the neighborhood of Phoenix now under construction will reduce the escape from that area to an average of about 300,000 acre feet and the discharge into the Colorado at Yuma to about 100,000 acre feet annually, which will occur as the peaks of extraordinary floods which cannot practicably be conserved. The water discharged by the Gila into the Colorado River under both virgin and depleted conditions is not, and never has been, of any economic value for irrigation or other beneficial uses for the reason that it occurs as floods of comparatively short duration and for the further reason that for probably six months of each year the Gila discharges no water into the Colorado River. The river in its lower reaches is wholly undependable as a supply of water for irrigation or other uses.