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Show A STACKED COMMITTEE 129 Watkins and Company didn't know then that they were to have a lot of trouble with Big Ed, nor did they know that he would soon become Colorado's governor. In the interest of getting his state what he thought it deserved, he would come close to wrecking the crsp. Until his appearance before the committee, Johnson had been fairly quiet about the crsp, but this was not due to preoccupation with other matters. It was doubt- ful if there was a man in the room, including Reclama- tion Bureau engineers, who knew more about the water problems of the Upper Basin. He quickly demonstrated his knowledge. The state of Colorado, he declared, each year delivered to the Lower Basin 9,347,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water.142 When Colorado got through meeting its obligations under the Colorado River Compact, and to Utah, New Mexico, and northeastern Arizona, and to the Mexican Water Treaty, Colorado had left 1,347,00 acre-feet of unallocated water for its own consumptive use. Johnson defied Bureau of Reclamation engineers to dispute him. He then went on to explain that Colorado had four watersheds on the western slope of the state, and the cold facts were, he declared, that one of these basins was far behind the other three in use, conserva- tion and development of its water. This was the Green- White-Yampa Basin. The bill before the committee would cause this basin to lose the right to all its re- maining water, and would force it to deliver all its water downstream to satisfy the irrevocable compacts Colorado had signed.143 If the crsp bill was enacted as it stood, all four basins would be thrown into a state of cutthroat competition with each other. Any bill for the development of the |