| OCR Text |
Show THE WESTERN WEB 111 It was 4:30 p.m. on the afternoon of May 14, 1948, when Millikin's final gavel fell, and the Senate hearing on SJR. 145 was closed. It was doubtful if any Senate hearings could have been more frustrating than on S. 1175 and SJR. 145. For more than a year Arizona had known that it could not get the Central Arizona Project bill to the Senate floor for a vote in the Eightieth Congress. When the Eighty-first Congress convened in January 1949, new hearings on the project would have to be held. It was Arizona's hope that they would be shortened by the committee record, but that might prove to be a vain hope. California would make every effort to prevent a project bill from being rushed out of committee. As for the Supreme Court resolutions, Arizona could feel as- sured that SJR. 145 would not be approved by the Milli- kin subcommittee before the Eightieth Congress ad- journed, but it had every reason to believe that Cali- fornia would reintroduce the measure in the coming Congress, and more hearings on it would be called. California attorneys and engineers who had testified in the Senate hearings knew they would be defeated on both the project bill and the resolution for litigation. Moreover, nothing could stop the Senate Interior Com- mittee from approving the project in the Eighty-first Congress, and nothing could stop it from blocking the attempt to get the controversy before the high court. The factors which militated against California in 1948 made it plain that a decision by the Senate com- mittee on either bill would not be based on merit, but on political or other considerations. One factor was the |
