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Show JANUARY ON CAPITOL HILL 71 "In order to satisfy this increase in consumptive use without reducing the flow at Lee's Ferry below seventy- five million acre-feet in any ten consecutive years, the average historical flow would have to be at least 13 mil- lion acre-feet per year. The historical flow at Lee's Ferry did not average as much as 13 million acre-feet per year from October 1917, to September 30, 1954. "This means that if the Federal Government had built the crsp and had begun to operate it as soon as the Colorado River Compact of 1922 was entered into, and in conformity with it, there would not have been enough water since then, for the beneficial consump- tive uses in the Upper Basin permitted by that Com- pact." Yet this, said Hill, was the project recommended to Congress, and added: "In my opinion, the proponents of the Upper Colo- rado River Storage Project are being overly optimistic when they assume that consumptive uses in the upper basin, totalling 7.5 million acre-feet per year, could be satisfied by providing enough reservoirs for complete regulation of the flow of the Colorado River. "Whenever the Colorado River above Lee's Ferry is regulated, which it must be before there can be much increased use in the upper basin states of their share of the total supply, there will not be enough water left in the Colorado River after treaty deliveries to Mexico to supply existing uses in the lower basin. "The records of the flow of the Colorado River show that the future of Southern California is dependent upon some practical solution of this physical problem. The Supreme Court of the United States can determine the rights of California to the waters of the Colorado River, |