Statement of Governor Edmund G. Brown of California on S. 1658 and the Pacific Southwest Water Plan

Document: Statement of Governor Edmund G. Brown of California on S. 1658 and the Pacific Southwest Water Plan, April 9-10, 1964, page 2tion that the uses chargeable to Arizona would include her uses on her tributaries, a proposition rejected by the Supreme Court. Thus California now has projects capable of using 5.36 million acre-feet annually, and actually using 5.1 million. The Secretary now has outstanding contracts for the delivery of that amount of water. This is more than 20 percent of the water now used in the entire state of California. Under the recent opinion of the Supreme Court we are entitled to 4.4 from the main stream while Arizona may take 2.8 and Nevada .3, all contingent, however, on the physical avail-ability of that total amount of water. The river can now support the existing main stream uses in all three states. But as Nevada, Arizona, and the Upper Basin States increase their uses of the shares to which they are entitled, California uses will have to be curtailed. When the main stream supply drops to 7.5 million acre-feet, California will be reduced to the 4.4 million acre-feet and thereby will have lost 962,000 acre-feet of her anticipated supply (or 700,000 acre-feet of her present uses). The Secretary estimates that this will happen by 1975. Although 7.5 million acre-feet would allow California her 4.4, without a regional plan there is every reason to believe the 7.5 million cannot be maintained. The present measurable water supply clearly indicates that no state will ever be able to rely on receiving its full share on a dependable basis. Thus further construction on the Colorado, without a concommittant plan for making more water available in the basin, will mean the rationing of shortages at the expense of all, but at an inordinate expense to California. Even if California is assured of 4.4 million acre-feet. she is hurt by the loss of nearly one million acre-feet. If she is not assured of 4.4, her hurt may be compounded by the loss of roughly an additional million acre-feet, or a total of about 2 million acre-feet, 90 percent of which is in actual present use. If S. 1658 were to pass in its present form, the only question would be how fast this loss would occur. Despite the differences of opinion on various other points, we know of no agency in California, state or local, which has not expressed approval of the broad concept of regional planning to meet the problems of the Colorado and the arid Pacific Southwest. The reason for this acceptance of course, is recognition of the facts that the demands of the areas dependent on the Colorado for water are out-running the supplies available from that troubled stream, and that the only way to prevent regression of present development and to permit future growth is to bring more water into the basin. There is an immediate shortage in Arizona. The present net over-draft of ground water in the Central Arizona area has been estimated by the Secretary at 2.2 million acre-feet per year. Obviously the continuing existence of either agricultural or urban development -2-Epson Perfection 4870 Photo, 400 dpi, 8 bit, 2,033,409 byte