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Show 302 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER industries and people of Arizona, California and Nevada. Ninety-one per cent of Hoover Dam firm power goes to public agencies. And after twenty-five years, if the releases from the Upper Division were only 75,000,000 acre-feet in each ten years, as the Upper Division states claim is their only obli- gation, the loss would continue forever. A distinguished engineer retained by the state of Colorado has said that if Lake Mead is not full on the day the gates are closed at Glen Canyon Dam, Lake Mead will never fill again. Right now it is about half full. QUALITY OF WATER 5. Another issue relates to quality of water: Does Article viii of the Colorado River Compact, which assures against the impairment of "present perfected rights," include the protection of the quality as well as the quantity of our water? We say that it does. California claims that her perfected rights at the time the Compact became effective were over 4,950,000 acre-feet per annum. The water reaching us now from the Upper Basin contains a little less than one ton of salt per acre-foot of water. It is estimated that when all the Upper Basin projects are built, the quantity of salt will about double, and the quality of our water will deteriorate accordingly. The Upper Basin Compact negotiators said in published speeches, but unfortunately not on the face of the Compact, that their feasible trans-mountain diversions would not amount to more than 500,000 acre-feet per year, and Colorado's would not exceed five per cent of her uses. Parenthetically, this compares with present plans to export 3,000,000 acre-feet from the Upper Basin of the Colo- rado River into the Mississippi and Rio Grande watersheds; Colorado wants to export, not 5 per cent, but over 50 per cent, of the total amount she claims. We ask a study of the effect on our agriculture before great trans-mountain export projects are built. The Issues, State vs. State Within the Lower Basin, a myriad of issues can be simplified, for lay discussion, down to two interrelated groups: those in- volved in Arizona's attack on California's rights and those involved in her own claim of title. |