OCR Text |
Show HUNGRY HORSE PREDICTION 23 The engineers of the Colorado Board of California, under Dallas E. Cole, did not hesitate to let it be known that they were finding difficulty in substantiating much of the material which the Reclamation Bureau had included in the plan assertedly as facts. The time ex- tension had been asked so that further studies and searches could be conducted, but foundations for the Bureau's contentions remained elusive. When at last the comments of the California engineers were com- pleted, their overall conclusion was that the crsp would saddle an almost inconceivably large debt on the tax- payers of the nation, which could never be liquidated, and that it could do irreparable damage to vital water and power projects in the Lower Basin of the river. The findings were dispatched to Sacramento for the approval of both Governor Earl Warren and State Engineer A. D. Edmonston. There they vanished. Not everyone in an official capacity in California was willing to oppose openly and vigorously the crsp. Several state officials advocated only mild disapproval of the project, while some others thought the state should take no position at all. It was a period of transition and political maneuvering on a high level in California. The state had for years been in a knockdown fight with Arizona over the pro- posed Central Arizona Project, and it faced costly and complicated litigation in the U. S. Supreme Court over water rights in the Colorado River. Some state leaders, and even some water officials, shied away from the idea of plunging headlong into another major battle with the Upper Basin states. Besides Governor Warren and Edmondston, drafts of the California comment also had been sent to the three |