OCR Text |
Show THE WESTERN WEB 89 Senator Millikin rapped his gavel on May 10, 1948, to begin consideration of the Supreme Court resolutions. The picture was slightly different than it had been in the hearings on S. 1175. Now the proponents were from California, the opponents from Arizona and the states of the Upper Basin. But the dramatis personae was very much the same. Present this morning in Room 224, Senate Office Building, were Senators Hugh Butler of Nebraska, chairman of the full Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs; Millikin, chairman of the Subcommittee on Irri- gation and Reclamation; Ecton of Montana; O'Ma- honey of Wyoming; and McFarland of Arizona. Other members of the committee who would attend some of the sessions were Senators Watkins of Utah, Downey of California, and Malone of Nevada.* Several other senators, not members of the Interior Committee, also would appear at the big council table. They were Knowland of California, Elbert D. Thomas of Utah, Edwin C. Johnson of Colorado, and Hayden of Arizona. Numerous attorneys having no connection with the matter would be in the audience, having been attracted by the legal questions involved. The first witness to speak, Knowland, told the com- mittee he had joined in presenting the Supreme Court Resolutions because there appeared to be no other way to settle the Colorado River controversy.70 "The trouble is," he said, "there is not enough water in the river, available to the Lower Basin, to satisfy the demands of each of the Lower Basin states. Somehow, somewhere, * In both the Senate and the House, the Committee on Public Lands was now called the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, popularly referred to as the Interior Committee. |