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Show THE IDES OF MARCH 121 30 - Section thirteen permitted any state in the basin to sue in the Supreme Court, and make the United States a party, if the laws of the river were not obeyed. 31-The committee felt that testimony objecting to Echo Park Dam was not constructive. Building the dam in Dinosaur was in the best interest of the nation. The minority report was less wordy, but it hit with well-directed and considered blows: 1 - The subsidy is grossly excessive. - The bill in- cludes a concealed subsidy from the nation's taxpayers of over $1 billion to provide irrigation water for less than 370,000 acres of land (of which about 240,000 acres would receive only a supplemental water supply) - a gift of over $2,500 per acre irrigated or $370,000 for each of the 2,700 farms to be benefited. 2 - The Bill puts the government directly into the power business. - On other projects, such as Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee, and even tva, power was sold to build the dams; here, for the first time, the dams would be built solely to sell power. Glen Canyon and Echo Park Dams are located so far downstream from the participating pro- jects that the water they store would irrigate no partici- pating projects. 3 - Transmission lines. - The bill would grant author- ity to the Secretary of the Interior to build transmission lines all over the country so long as they connected with a federal project now or hereafter to be built. 4 - The power is high-cost power. 5 - The financing of the project would require that the power be sold at six mills or more for the next seventy-five years. This is unrealistic and unsound. 6 - The ultimate cost is at least $5 billion. - Section 2 of the bill attempts to commit the Congress to the propo- sition that other storage and participating projects will be added, to use the full 7,500,000 acre-feet apportioned by the Colorado River Compact to the Upper Basin. There are over one hundred such projects in the Reclamation |