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Show 138 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER permitted Brower to read from a prepared statement, and as Brower struck at the Upper Basin arguments which advocated Echo Park Dam, Watkins' sharp face became a study in flushed granite.155 Speaking of the vast mineral resources of which the Upper Basin so readily boasted, and which the project supporters contended could not be developed without great power dams, Brower declared: 156 "To give this view perspective, let's use a statistic. There are reported to be - the Bureau of Reclamation uses this figure - four hundred billion tons of bitumi- nous coal in the Upper Basin coal reserve. All the power that Echo Park Dam will generate, from start to silted-up finish, can be replaced by utilizing only ten ounces out of every ton of coal in the Upper Basin reserve. "Or state it another way. For all its importance, legitimately developed hydroelectric power provides but five per cent of our present energy requirements. Coal, oil, and gas supply the rest. If we developed every us- able bit of stream in this country, we could add but two per cent more of our present requirements. The un- developed part of the Colorado is but a fraction of that two per cent, and Echo Park Dam is but a fraction in turn of the undeveloped part of the Colorado River. Multiplying these factors together, we come up with a ratio that can be expressed in this way: If you were to consider that our total rate of using energy today would light our national house for an evening, Echo Park's total share would come on and go off while you blink your eye. It is one part to ten thousand. "Echo Park Dam would solve no power shortage, and it would lose a park forever." |
