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Show 32 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER Chapman and Straus for the excellence of the crsp plan, and then proceeded to tear it apart.33 "I am not sold on irrigation projects that will be unable to repay construction costs within a reasonable period of years - if ever," he wrote, and noted that the plan was based "on the irrigator's ability to pay in a period of fifty years, following a suitable development period, at least part of the capital costs allocated to irrigation." In Smith's opinion that was not good business, and he declared: "It will certainly be argued that if any project is unable to pay all costs in fifty or sixty years it is a poor investment, and that the Bureau is only helping to promote such poor business in order to sus- tain and increase its personnel and prestige. . ." Like Colorado, New Mexico heartily endorsed the crsp but felt neglected by it. New Mexico agencies wanted to build three projects - Navajo-Shiprock, South San Juan, and San Juan-Chama - but couldn't agree on how to divide the waters that must supply them The Reclamation Bureau was stymied. Plans couldn't be drawn for the three projects until it had been determined how much water each should receive, so the Bureau had simply omitted them - temporarily, of course - and had asked only that Navajo Dam be constructed. Navajo-Shiprock Project was for the benefit of the Navajo Indians. Navajo Dam would store water for use in the Shiprock area of the Navajo Reservation. The South San Juan Project would irrigate non-Indian lands in the same area. The San Juan-Chama Project was a horse of another color. It would take water out of the San Juan River, |