Scope of Lower Colorado River Basin Plan

Document: Attachment 1, Scope of Lower Colorado River Basin Plan, March 1965, page 8national obligation and should be nonreimbursable. The propriety of the nonreimbursable allocation is readily demonstrable. When the Mexican Treaty was entered into, it was considered that 1,500,000 acre-feet could be delivered to Mexico annually without impairing the availability for use in the Upper and Lower Basin of the quantities allocated by Article III(a) and III(b) of the Colorado River Compact. The reason for this optimism is apparent from the report of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the treaty. The Committee stated that "according to all the testimony, the average annual virgin runoff from the Colorado River Basin is approximately 18,000,000 acre-feet a year." Senate Ex. Rep. No. 2, 79th Congress, 1st Session, p. 4. Based on runoff records to date, however, the Bureau of Reclamation has determined that the long-term average annual virgin runoff of the Colorado River is approximately 16,000,000 acre-feet, or 2,000,000 acre-feet less than that upon which the treaty was predicated. The Nation as a whole undertook the obligation to Mexico. The inadequate water supply of the Colorado River, however, means that without importation and nonreimbursable allocation, the burden of meeting the obligation falls on the Colorado River Basin States alone. 8Epson Perfection 4870 Photo, 400 dpi, 8 bit, 1,633,801 byte