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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. E. LEGISLATION Pending Bills to Authorize a Lower Colorado River Project During the 1966 water year the most important legislation to the Colorado River Basin involved proposals to construct a Lower Colorado River Basin Project, or a Colorado River Basin Project. Pending Bills to authorize the construction of such a project would also give the Secretary of the Interior authority to investigate and plan other projects and functions. At the beginning of the Second Session of the 89th Congress pending legislation consisted 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. Controversial Legislation Certain aspects of this legislation have been subjects of considerable controversy since August 1963 when the first version of the Secretary of the Interior's Pacific Southwest Water Plan was made public. Major differences of opinion have existed between the States of the Upper Division and the States of the Lower Division with regard to such items as the right of the Upper Division States to accumulate hold-over storage in major storage reservoirs, the use of money from the Upper Colorado River Basin Fund to pay for diminutions in generation at Hoover Dam caused by filling of Upper Basin Reservoirs, the future physical availability of water apportioned to the Upper Division States by the Colorado River Compact that will be temporarily used on the Central Arizona Project, and the obligation of the Upper Division States to supply water for the deficiencies in the Mexican Treaty Burden. |