OCR Text |
Show 96 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER Tudor had said the difference in evaporation losses between Echo Park and the next most favorable dam site was 108,000 acre-feet. He then told the committee: "From Mr. Tudor's own figures, or the figures someone worked out for him, it can be shown that one of the alternates he investigated does not evaporate 165,000 acre-feet more than Echo Park Dam, as he testified, but 2,610 acre-feet less, while storing some 700,000 acre-feet more. It is hard to believe, I know, to someone sitting here who has no engineering experi- ence, but if I am wrong, it must surely be because he is wrong, and he is not supposed to be wrong in engi- neering matters or figures." Brower stated emphatically that he was not an engi- neer. His arithmetic was of the ninth grade variety. But ninth grade arithmetic was all that was necessary to illustrate that the Bureau could neither add, subtract nor multiply. He thereupon took up chalk, and on a blackboard led the committee through a series of arithmetical computations which showed that Tudor and the Bureau had made four serious mistakes in simple figuring. Rep. Dawson snapped angrily: If Brower thought Tudor such a poor engineer, how did it come that Tudor was able to make the two ends of the San Fran- cisco Bay Bridge, which he had designed, meet in the middle? Brower only turned away in reply. On through the sessions of January 27 and 28, the defenders of the national parks stepped forward, one after the other, to give their recitations.123 Then sud- denly there were dinosaurs all over the West. Rep. Aspinall broke in to say that the biggest dinosaur quarry of all was near his home in Colorado. Rep. |