Before proceeding, I should like to have an assurance that we will have some reasonable time within which to prepare written statements. Some of us didn't learn of the hearing today until last Monday. Some of us heard Saturday. I got the Senator's telegram, which was dated on May 8, on Saturday morning. It came in a letter by regular mail from the Magna Trucking Co. I don't know what its story was, but that is the way I got the wire. So at this time I would like to request permission to have from, say, 30 to 60 days within which to submit written statements, and particularly statements in response to the technical information that has been supplied by the Soil Conservation Service.

Senator Moss. I have already granted the request to Mr. Nielsen that the record be held open for a matter of 2 weeks beyond the date when the engineer will hold his hearing on-is that the 28th? Mr. NIELSEN. Twenty-fourth.

Senator Moss. Twenty-fourth. So that much time will be allotted, which is approximately 30 days, yes. Not quite 30 days, is it? Well, we will make it 30 days from today.

Mr. SKEEN. Let's make it 30 days, so we will know.

Senator Moss. Thirty days, so we all understand it, from today the record will be closed.

Mr. SKEEN. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF E. J. SKEEN, ATTORNEY AND COUNSEL FOR OPPONENTS OF THE PROJECT

Mr. SKEEN. I believe, before going into some of the details of our contentions, I should perhaps state in a few simple sentences what our contentions are, summarize them, so that we can talk to those.

First, we contend that the water right for the project is in controversy, and we mean serious controversy. Second, the water supply for the proposed project is inadequate. Third, it has been reported that there is a vast undeveloped supply of underground water in Sanpete County. We believe that this water within the county should be developed and utilized before water is taken from another basin. Fourth, the water supply for the existing Bureau of Reclamation project, which is the Scofield project, cities and towns, and such essential industries as agriculture, steel, coal, and power will be seriously encroached upon if this project is built.

We had a rather short time in Washington to present our side of this controversy, and we have now the printed record and will want to supply some of the information that apparently was not put in in Washington.

Before calling on others, I should like to discuss one of the fundamentals of any project for impoundment of water and for reclamation development. Certainly before we build a reservoir we should be sure of two things first: First is that there is a water right that will entitle the builders of the reservoir to stop and store the water; and second it is most essential that the water is physically present at the site to be stored. Unless you have those two elements, it is very apparent that we shouldn't go further into economics and details of a project. And we think, and seriously contend, that these elements are lacking here. We have heard from Mr. Bradshaw and others a discussion in general about water measurements and water supplies, but I would like to bring it to the attention of the committees and subcommittees that

this project is on the Gooseberry River, or Gooseberry Creek. The point of diversion is near the head of Gooseberry Creek. The water measurements which have been talked about are down in what is known as the Heiner gaging station, which is just above Price and is many, many miles below the Scofield Reservoir and below Gooseberry Creek. We think that there is a fundamental fallacy in all of the water studies for this reason: they have based the water supply on two things: (1) The matter of areas of ground on which precipitation will fall, and they have estimated what the yield will be; and (2) they have made the measurements down some 30 or 40 miles from where the real point at issue is concerned.

Now, we should first get into the question as to what the water rights are on Gooseberry Creek. That is the creek we are concerned with. And I would like to call your attention to the fact that there are three water rights of record on Gooseberry Creek with which we are concerned. The first one, the one that has the first priority, is one set up in the so-called Tidwell decree, or Morse decree. The date of priority is 1902. And this is what the decree says about a storage right on Gooseberry Creek:

It is further ordered, adjudged, and decreed that the Mammoth Reservoir Co. has the right to store and use in its reservoir system all of the waters of Gooseberry Creek, including Cabin Hollow Creek, its tributary, the said creek being tributary to the Price River, subject to the right, however, of the other parties of this action to 1,600 acre-feet of water from said sources each year, which shall be distributed to said parties after being discharged by said company from said reservoir in such quantities and at such times as may be determined by the water commissioner or other officer provided by this decree to regulate and distribute the waters involved in this action.

That is the end of the quote from the decree.

Now, that, mind you, covers all of the waters of Gooseberry Creek. It has a priority of 1902. The water right has never been attacked in the courts. The decree has never been amended. It is the book of water rights on the Price River. And, as I say, it has not been amended. It is in the records. And that would consume all of the water.

Now, if we just assume for the sake of argument that there is something wrong with that right, which we deny, the second priority is a 1906 priority-application No. 1035-owned by Price River Water Users Association, for 12,020 acre-feet.

Now, that priority is on Gooseberry Creek at the site described in the sponsors' application No. 9593, but it is ahead of it by some 18 years in priority, and that has to be supplied first out of the waters of Gooseberry Creek before the third priority comes into play at all.

The third priority is a 1924 priority, application 9593, owned by Sanpete Water Users Association. Now, that priority is subject, as indicated, to the Tidwell decree of a grant of the right to the Mammoth Reservoir Co., which right, by the way, is now owned by the Carbon Canal Co. It has succeeded to the interests of the Mammoth Reservoir Co. That is owned on the Carbon County side.

The second priority, 12,020 acre-feet, belongs to the Price or Carbon County side, Price River side. Now, that is on Gooseberry Creek, and those are the priorities with which we are concerned.

Following the application 9593 we have one down on the Price River owned by the United States for 90,000 acre-feet, which was for the Scofield project.

Now, let's get down to the Price River priorities-I have covered Gooseberry Creek-and let's just see what is ahead of the Sanpete filing on the Price River. The first priority, 1902, water rights to various direct-flow users for 167.4 second-feet of water. That is No. 1. No. 2, second priority, 1906, application 1036, for 125 secondfeet of water for irrigation use. That is 125 second-feet in the summer, 25 second-feet in the winter.

We have the Wellington Canal Co. with a 1911 priority, 20 secondfeet.

The priority, then, for the Sanpete group is the one I gave before up on the Gooseberry Creek, 1924, for 15,000 acre-feet of water. That is a storage right. And I also have previously mentioned the 1906 application, 1035, for 12,020 acre-feet on Gooseberry Creek. That being a tributary of the Price River, I am mentioning it twice. Now, we take the position that if these rights are served, it would be an idle and foolish act to create a reservoir on the headwaters of the Gooseberry Creek to divert water that simply is not there. And Mr. Win Templeton, an engineer, who is eminently qualified to express an opinion on it, will review some of the facts on water supply to fill these rights.

I would like to recall Mr. Nielsen's statements of a few moments ago. He said that they recognize that they had to release water to take care of prior rights. If they release water, they will simply, year after year, have nothing to store, and the Carbon County interests are diligently going to protect these rights, are now, and will in the future. We have had some discussion of the tripartite contract, and we would like to point out again, as we have in other hearings, that the owners of these prior water rights that I have mentioned are not parties to the tripartite agreement. They didn't sign the agreement and, as will be pointed out later, it is admitted that they are not bound by the agreement, so that talk about the tripartite agreement is really of no significance whatever in the study of this problem.

Now, I would like to go in briefly to the item I mentioned about the undeveloped underground water resources in Sanpete County. I have in my hand an excerpt from a report of Dr. Ray E. Marsell, published in the sixth biennial report of the Utah Water and Power Board. I would like to quote from his report and, for the record, will later furnish the entire text.

Senator Moss. The entire text may go in.

Mr. SKEEN (reading):

Because of the great size of the ground water reservoir in Sanpete Valley, both the alluvial source, already partly developed, and the relatively new source of artesian water from the underlying bedrock, present production can be more than doubled without endangering whatsoever the potential ground water supply. The new water produced will be salvaged from the present large evapo-transpiration losses from the swampy and marshy areas in the low medial strip of the valley floor. A well developed program designed to produce ultimately 20,000 acre-feet annually would represent only one-fifth of the present conservatively estimated annual loss of 80,000 acre-feet.

A comparison of the current proposal to bring 8,000 acre-feet of surface water by means of the transmountain Gooseberry Creek project into upper Sanpete Valley

that is the one we are talking about

with the production of a similar amount of ground water should prove of interest here. Twenty wells, properly located, could easily average 2 cubic feet per second each or the equivalent of 80 acre-feet per day, which for an average

irrigation season of 100 days would yield the same 8,000 acre-feet, but at only a small fraction of the cost. The maximum cost of 20 fully equipped modern, large-diameter (16-inch), deep (300-foot) irrigation wells would not exceed $400,000. The Gooseberry project, on the basis of recent estimates, involves several millions of dollars and little water would be available until the whole project was completed and the large capital outlay fully expended. The Gooseberry project, like all similar surface water storage projects, offers no absolute guaranty of water during prolonged dry cycle or drought.

Now the same eminent geologist has been quoted in the document just handed me this morning to the effect that there would be approximately 3,700 acre-feet, which would be the maximum yield that could be expected in Sanpete County. That is quite a drop from 80,000.

Senator Moss. I think the difference was, talking about the area up here that would be served by the North Sanpete, and the other is the whole of Sanpete County. At least, it seemed to me that was the testimony.

Mr. SKEEN. Undoubtedly there will have to be a further study, and that is one reason I asked for some time to do it.

Senator Moss. Yes.

Mr. SKEEN. I would like to offer in evidence a document which has been printed and circulated by the Utah Water and Power Board and Utah State University, entitled, "Developing a State Water Plan," and call attention to the map known as map 3 in the document, and the discussion of the development of the ground water reservoirs in Utah found on page 9. Since it will be in the record I will not take the time to quote from that.

Senator Moss. This will be part of the records of the committee and will be considered.

Mr. SKEEN. Now, at this time I will call upon Mr. Calvin Behle, attorney for the United States Steel Corp. and other interests, who will discuss some legal aspects of this problem.

Senator Moss. All right, Mr. Behle, go right ahead, please.

STATEMENT OF CALVIN A. BEHLE, ATTORNEY AND COUNSEL FOR THE UNITED STATES STEEL CORP.

Mr. BEHLE. Senator Moss, gentlemen, this, I believe, is the sixth occasion where the industries, where the one mentioned happens to spearhead it now, have had the unpleasant task of participating in a backyard squabble among the citizens of Utah, when we certainly would much prefer that we could get together on these things. Somehow it doesn't seem to be possible. But at least we are here today in Utah instead of the last time back in the Capitol corridors. I have asked myself so many times why is this so, what separates people that are friends of ours, that are upright citizens, that are conscientious-there is no question about their sincerity in this matter, and why do we have to get into this situation.

Keeping in mind, Mr. Chairman, your remarks, I do not like to repeat those that were in the House hearing on page 84 of the proceedings, and so I would ask that they be considered.

Senator Moss. They will be.

Mr. BEHLE. But I would like to update those remarks and what I consider the situation to be since last August. At that time I said it seemed to me that the answer to my own question was two things: First, there was a fear, and some ground to that fear by way of-may

be it was lawyer's oratory-that existing rights would be impaired. Now, I think we have gone a long way in that in the hearings which were instituted at the suggestion of some of the people back in Washington that we try to work out some of these legal problems, as well as the engineering problems. And Mr. Nielsen did make a very frank statement that, even though we could probably continue arguing forever as to what we thought he had said before or others had said that there might be impairment, that as far as the Sanpete County people were concerned and the Soil Conservation Service, so far as he could quote them, there is no intention to impair prior rights, and there was no longer the contention which at least I thought and understood had been made that we were all bound as kind of third-party beneficiaries-I mean everybody in Carbon County-by this so-called tripartite agreement. If there ever had been such a contention, that was denied at these hearings, and yet it had been serious enough so that it happened that Governor Lee's son in our office had prepared a 20-page memorandum on that specific thing, and I think that has cleared the air considerably, that these primary rights, these prior rights, are not bound except as they may have been presently owned by either signatory parties or their successors. So we did accomplish that much, at least in the hearing; and, with those very frank statements, there was little left for that hearing, and no justifiable issue, and that particular proceeding was dismissed. And for the record here, the findings and judgment are a part of Mr. Nielsen's statement. However, we still get back to these basic questions: What are these prior rights? A combination of legal, as well as engineering, data. There is, and has been for some time, an adjudication of the stream, and that has been referred to at the prior hearings, and I thought it might be of interest to advise the committee of the present status. As of yesterday Mr. Lee, of our office, tells me that the State engineer has completed the mapping, that they are partially through the work of preparing the data on property ownership of the Carbon CountyPrice River area that is served by the Price River waters, and that within the month they expect to start their procedure of writing up the claims and taking up with the water users, starting with the head of the stream, the exact nature of the claims, and that they expect by perhaps October or November to get down to the bottom of the stream downstream where it happens that the United States Steel coalwashing plant is located. And when that data is prepared, we will, for the first time, have some indication of what is the water demand under these prior rights. If you can pardon a little humor, the other night I watched George Gobel act as Dr. Ben Casey, and he came in and he was going through the head, the skull he always goes through the skull, no matter what part of the body may be under controland he didn't know whether the appendectomy was going to be to put the appendix in or take it out, but he said, "Let's operate and then we will see."

And really I think sometimes we tend to act that way, because Sanpete says, for a good reason, "Let's build the project and then we will find out." And Carbon County says, "Well, I think we ought to find out first."

Now, again, as we have stated time and time again, speaking for our specific clients, the United States Steel Corp. and I believe this view is shared by the other industrial users; I might mention them,