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Show 88 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER ists, and several Navajo Indians. Then he got his signals mixed. Suddenly a voice was heard objecting "most vehe- mently" to Echo Park Dam. It came from Michael Petruska of Troy, New York, speaking on behalf of 350,000 members of the New York State Conservation Council.112 "How did he get in?" a committee member, in a stage whisper, asked of a colleague. "Harrison must have been asleep," was the reply. Petruska wasn't asleep, however, although he had been called upon out of turn. In the light of known plans to misuse other national parks, he declared, the building of Echo Park Dam "would establish a highly dangerous precedent, regardless of any assurances to the contrary." Reps. Harrison, Aspinall and Dawson snapped and sniffed at Petruska, but he stood his ground, and left with head high after admitting that he, himself, had never been inside a national park. Watkins glowered at Harrison. The alert Rep. Saylor had discovered that the Na- tional Park Service had issued a pamphlet which listed the plans of the Reclamation Bureau for the invasion of various federal reserves. He presented it, and it went into the record over a strong protest from Rep. Miller. The advocates of Echo Park Dam had not planned to call the director of the National Park Service, Conrad L. Wirth, as a witness. This had been termed an "ano- malous situation" by Rep. Leroy Johnson. At the time, Johnson had a bill before Congress which would forever prohibit the construction of any water storage project in any national park or monument. Johnson's anomalous situation was the apparent gagging of Wirth, whom he |