One of the problems we have seen this year, we have nothing historically like this year, at least in the records we have; they just didn't recognize it.

Mr. REID. I have more questions, but we have a short amount of time.

Mr. Lewis.

Mr. CLARK. I will be happy to answer any questions you would be willing to submit to us.

Mr. REID. Fine.

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you, Dr. Clark, I appreciate your last comment because we will have questions for the record.

Dr. Clark, a distant relative of mine, master craftsman in the construction field building houses, he settled out his years as a building inspector in the county. All that practical education, not necessarily masters or doctors degrees, taught him a lot about what you do in changing the old world circumstances. For example, when you build a mountain cabin on the side of a hill, you don't necessarily go by the book.

This year in terms of your areas of responsibility, you say that early in the year, January, February, it is clear that the year was unusual, that is there was a lot of snow up there, but also the temperature remained unusually cool. You indicated later in the year, in April, it got unusually warmer and the water flowed.

It seems there are many, many elements which are part of this process that would have suggested to a lot of people that maybe we shouldn't be going by the book.

Were there people within the Weather Service who recommended to the Bureau that indeed since this was an unusual year, unusual analyses and steps ought to be taken because we may have a different kind of circumstance than historically the case?

Mr. CLARK. I really can't answer that question, sir. I am not sure of all the discussions between the Bureau of Reclamation and our office. I know that our office was in communication very frequently with the Bureau of Reclamation and with the other agencies involved. Whether it was suggested to them that this year looked unusual, that I don't know.

I will have to admit in hindsight, it certainly was, but in foresight we have been caught more than once by being optimistic or pessimistic and overwarning. I think one of the biggest problems we encounter in the Service is the fact that you have to be very careful between underwarning and overwarning people because if you warn too much they begin to ignore you. If you don't warn enough, then you have the same problem.

Mr. LEWIS. Let me ask you the question a little different way. As I understand it, one of the procedures for measuring snowpack and its potential impact is by sending personnel up to the pack with equipment to where the snow is but that over the years a pattern has developed that apparently after April 1 no one takes the equipment up there, but you rather guesstimate from the experience you have had that year.

Did the changing circumstances, unusual circumstances, cause your personnel to decide that they send the body and the equipment up there after April 1 this year?

Mr. CLARK. I must confess that, in fact, I have statistics on what actually happened.

On the first of April there were 170 measurements made of snow water equipment and precipitation. On June 1 there were 85 made. So that is true, we did not make measurements as often as we should have because of the fact that it normally doesn't happen, so we didn't.

Mr. LEWIS. The point of the question is obvious, my concern is just maybe in this most unusual year a lot of people whose job it is to respond to the unusual, we found them going by the book. Mr. CLARK. Right.

Mr. LEWIS. It is clear to me there is one lesson from this, that is one element we have to eliminate from this process. We did have a lot of communication between agencies once the flooding really began. I have serious doubt about how much communication there was between bureaus and agencies, et cetera, before the flood began. Frankly, that is not good enough. [Applause.]

We are not doing this for applause.

Mr. CLARK. I agree. In fact, last week we had a meeting with the Soil Conservation Service to do measurements in Reno, and I wish you could have been there because it was kind of a knockdown, drag-out meeting because there were a lot of difficult situations this year, and we discussed them frankly.

I think in the future we will do better. It is just one of those things that we just didn't do as well as we should have. Mr. LEWIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. REID. Mr. McCandless.

Mr. MCCANDLESS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Clark, one of my congressional committee assignments is on the Science and Technology Committee. I bring this up because the Federal Aeronautics Administration, in their pilot program, is currently installing electronic devices throughout the United States which have the capability of measuring all the relevant weather particulars, and transmitting electronically into audible sounds that can be understood by pilots when they turn to a certain station on their radio. An electronic English response to the ceilings or whether it is raining or snowing all can come from this box. That is on the one hand.

Then in your testimony you talk about gages that are poles and measure by the distance on the pole, like a surveying device. To me this sounds like the covered wagon coming across the Mojave Desert versus NASA going into space.

The point I wish to make is, do you know of equipment that you have not been able to acquire that would represent 20th century electronics and could be more precise in these critical areas than, say, a pole that has to be sited? Do you have access to this equipment?

Mr. CLARK. Certainly.

Mr. MCCANDLESS. Do you have a program to implement them into your forecasting?

Mr. CLARK. That is correct. Every year for 10 years I have tried to get more data, real time data, and we have not been very successful.

The problems, of course, with putting in automatic gages is a maintenance problem. For example, at Mount St. Helens, the helicopter costs alone are something like $70,000 a year just to make it up there and service the gages. We do have, however, equipment that is space-age technology. We have satellites which use-we use the photographs, we have indigo satellites, transponding equipment that takes the data from the Earth to the satellites and brings it back to our office in Suitland, Md.

So the technology is there. At the present time there are approximatley 2,000 stations, most of them not run by the Weather Service but owned by the Bureau of Reclamation, some by the corps, some by the GS. We get all this data. Every bit of data is collected, that is collected in the United States of any type in this area we get. It may not be paid for by the Weather Service, but it is actually in our system. It is just that unfortunately we still don't have enough.

Mr. MCCANDLESS. Are you finding it difficult to acquire this to the degree you should have it?

Mr. CLARK. Yes, in general it has been very difficult to obtain. Mr. MCCANDLESS. What is your budget in this area?

Mr. CLARK. The committee that oversees our budget is the committee that has the State Department, Commerce, and agencies dealing with law-State, Justice.

Mr. MCCANDLESS. Although I am not a member of that committee, I would suggest that you possibly submit some statement for the record or a followup document that would outline what you see as space-age technology that is needed to update your information. I have a double purpose in taking this time. Not only are we having more problems on the Colorado River, as exemplified by the present situation, but we seem to have more weather problems because weather is becoming more and more important to not only the private but the public sector in making plans and establishing policies.

We must fine tune the device so that it produces more. I am an advocate of this. In Riverside County we talk about the 100-year flood. We have had two of these back to back. We shouldn't have had another one for 200 years. But we had one just a short time ago, so we are into a 300-year period now.

Mr. CLARK. Well, we do have a plan for enhancing the networks in the Colorado River Basin. It is a rather comprehensive plan. I might just make a point that the cost of this, installing the gages, is exactly equal to the cost of my entire budget for the entire United States. That is what we are talking about.

Mr. MCCANDLESS. I am not talking about getting this overnight, but that we have a plan and use it to ultimately have this information available.

Mr. CLARK. Right. I agree, sir.

Mr. MCCANDLESS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. REID. That does complete the questioning. Thank you very much, Dr. Clark.

The next panel is also a single person, Dr. Paulson from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

[Prepared statement of Larry J. Paulson, with an attachment, may be found in appendix II.]

STATEMENT OF DR. LARRY J. PAULSON, DIRECTOR, LAKE MEAD LIMNOLOGICAL RESEARCH CENTER, UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, LAS VEGAS

Mr. PAULSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have brought my aide along to run the projector so I can show you a few slides.

Mr. Chairman, I have another request, as much as I enjoy being on TV, I would sooner people see my slides, so if we can turn off as many lights as possible.

I am director of the Research Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. I have done a fair amount of research on the Colorado River over the years, and what I would like to do is to share with you some of the historical data on runoff and reservoir storage because I think it is going to shed a little light on some of the things that have contributed to this year's problem.

With that, we have a slide here. One thing that has been mentioned frequently throughout this event going back up as early as mid-June was the occurrence of record runoff. When you talk about record runoff, the first thing you have to do is define the record period.

Well, on the Colorado River system we have got very reliable data that date back to 1878 at the Yuma stations. Those records have been used to reconstruct records for other stations. In addition, records have been reconstructed from high water marks in the canyons in particular. So we have a fairly reliable record that dates back over 100 years.

My definition of a record is the highest flow that we have had over the period that we have reliable measurements for. These are data which were derived from the U.S. Geological Survey reports or the corps reports on flood control. 1884 is the largest known flood ever to have occurred in the Colorado River Basin. It is estimated that the runoff from April through July was 30.2 million acre-feet.

In 1983, the runoff, natural runoff, was estimated at 17 million acre-feet. That is a little short of a record if we look at it back to 1884.

I want to make one other definition, when you talk about Colorado River water, you have to make a distinction between natural flow, depleted flow, regularly depleted flow, many ways. What I have on the chart is natural flow in the bars there. That is in the amount of water that would have gone down the basin if we had not had dams, depletions for agriculture and so on. So that is the absolute maximum.

Let's take a look at some other areas. If some people define the record period as that period for which we have measurements at the station, those records at least go back to 1911. I have the books with me. I am so fond of the history of the Colorado River, I dig through these old books and you turn up a lot of good information. In 1917 spring runoff, April through July, was 18 million acrefeet. That is 1 million acre-feet higher than we had this year. In 1920, it was 17.007, you can round that off, so it was about equal to what we have this year.

There are a number of years there on the record where the runoff was higher than what we had in 1983. There is one year that stands out like a sore thumb, 1884. Lots of water.

Let's look at the other thing, the measurement, what actually came down the system? I have got that here. Again this year we have a major runoff of 14.6 million feet except that we have to adjust that for storage now upstream. After 1963 you have to take whatever comes down the ferry, what was stored at Powell, Flaming Gorge, and other places and that will give you the runoff of what is called unregulated. That is what I have here.

At this point we can argue as much as we want to about record runoffs, but it wasn't record runoff that flooded the reservoirs.

If you look at this slide, it is hard to see, but it is in the statement, table 1. Look at my footnotes. It says there that Lake Powell volume exceeded spillways on June 8 at a spring inflow of 5.172 million acre-feet. That spring inflow flows from April 1, so you take the April 1 combined inflow, add the May to that and take 8 days of June and the reservoir spill at 5 million feet.

The peak inflow from the combined Lake Powell input, there are three rivers that feed that system up there, the Green, the Colorado, and the San Juan, the Green and the San Juan have impoundments upstream; the Colorado runs wild really. The combined inflow, there was only 5.172 million acre-feet. That is not very much water to put that reservoir over the top of the spillway. That is the measured amount that went in.

The peak inflow occurred on June 28. Commissioner Broadbentit was about 116,000 CFS, that is probably unregulated, and the measured data were 111,500 CFSP on June 28. At that time the discharges out of Glen Canyon Dam were running 85,000 CFS, the levels in Powell stood at 7 feet above the spillways. So when the peak flows came, Lake Powell was in full flood operation.

I have also heard another term about unusual. Again, you have to define what unusual is. Now, if I look at the 1983 runoff and I compare that to 1957, it is not unusual at all. It is virtually identical, over 5 million acre-feet; it is in here to the decimal. But 5 million acre-feet came through the Colorado River into Lake Mead in June; 4 million came into Lake Mead in July. We had about 5.03 this year, so it is not that unusual.

If you look at 1917, up to 7 million acre-feet went through the Colorado River in June. Now that is a little more unusual than 1957 and 1983.

You have been told a lot about the fact that reservoirs were to the brim, there is no question that the Bureau operated within the 1982 flood control plan. That plan requires that they have 5.35 million acre-feet of storage space available in the combined reservoir system on 1 January. That is not what I am here to address, though.

What I want to ask is, is that an adequate flood control plan? That is the question I think we need to really bear down on and see if we can't get answers to. I have listed in table 2 all the flood control plans that were available on the-or used on Hoover Dam dating back to the original plan which was the Debbler plan named after the hydrologist that developed the plan in 1930.