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Show Library Efforts are being continued to accumulate all types of engineering, legal, economics, and semi-technical documents related to the Colorado River Basin to comprise a well-equipped and efficiently operating permanent library. Many thousands of pages of some documents have been placed on microfilm. Information in the Commission's library will be available to any of its member States on short notice should a need arise. Studies are being made and supplemented of many problems associated with the development, utilization, and conservation of water and hydro-electric resources of the Colorado River Basin. D. LEGISLATION Pending Bills to Authorize a Lower Colorado River Basin Project During the past year the most important legislation to the Colorado River Basin involved proposals to construct the Central Arizona Project, either separately, or as a part of a comprehensive Lower Colorado River Basin Project. Bills to authorize the construction of the Project would also give the Secretary of the Interior authority to investigate and plan other projects and functions. Legislation pending in the 89th Congress consists of 37 identical Bills before the House of Representatives, H. R. 4671-4706 and H. R. 9248 to authorize a Lower Colorado River Basin Project; and two Bills before the Senate, S. 1019 which is identical to H. R. 4671, and S. 75 which would authorize the construction of the Central Arizona Project as a separate enterprise. Water Needs of the Lower Basin The central portion of the State of Arizona is in critical need of supplemental water. Conditions resulting from inadequate water supplies are probably more immediately serious than those of any other State in the Colorado River Basin. Water users are currently "mining" from ground water more than two million acre-feet per year that cannot be replaced from natural precipitation on tributary watersheds. Water users in California are currently using about 700,000 acre-feet more water than confirmed to that State by the Supreme Court in Arizona v. California. Facilities are under construction to import northern California water into the southern part of the 46 |