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Show 70 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER enormous projects to carry Colorado River water over the continental backbone to them. The residents of the western slope were just as determined to keep Colorado River water on their side of the divide. The water which the eastern slopers would take was the purest water in the entire Colorado River system. Exporting large quantities of it would affect the quality of the water that went on down the river. With its major projects near the lower end of the river, California had a particular interest in the matter. Colorado officials evidently forgot about the paper which the eminent engineer, Raymond A. Hill, had sub- mitted to the Mid-Century Conference on Resources of the Future. With the hope that he could solve the intra- state row, they engaged him to make a study of the problems. What Hill reported didn't please Colorado, and did nothing to solve the dilemma. Bluntly, Hill said that "Colorado could not count on its share of the 7.5 million acre-feet apportioned to the Upper Basin; not because there would be no need for all of it, but because the practical limit of development would be about 6.2 million acre-feet per year (in the Upper Basin)." Hill's finding, of course, was challenged, as he ad- mitted, "by promoters of more and bigger projects." 80 Under the basic Colorado River Compact, the Upper Basin was required to let seventy-five million acre-feet of water pass Lee's Ferry in any period of ten consecu- tive years. Citing this provision, Hill said: "The Upper Basin's consumptive use is about two million acre-feet per year now. There could be about 5.5 million acre-feet expansion in the Upper Basin - under the Compact. |
