They relied on the records of a gauging station at Yuma, Arizona, for a twenty-year period that had been a bit wetter than normal. In the years since the Colorado River Compact, the riverΓÇÖs flow past Lees Ferry has been closer to 14 million acre feet and tree ring studies done by the University of Arizona suggest that the average for the past 400 years is only 13 million acre feet.
Inevitably, this created a shortfall and the rush was on to build dams which would control the flow of the Colorado River and its tributaries and insure the correct apportion-
ments between basins. To help finance the construction and operation of this complex system, the proposed dams would be outfitted with powerplants to produce hydroelectric power. The Colorado River would never be the same again.
