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Show 180 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER ber of Congress interested in it, simply by a request to the House Document Room. Murdock now summoned A. T. Jones, an Arizona farmer, to the witness chair, and then did not permit him to testify.242 Jones was instructed to file his state- ment for the record. It was Jones' thought that the Central Arizona Project "is just as much a rescue propo- sition as is that undertaken by the government when dis- asters are caused by floods and earthquakes." No one bothered to disagree with him. Murdock discovered that he had more papers to present, and ordered printed two more statements. They came from Sidney Kartus, a witness in previous hear- ings,243 a long-tunnel advocate, and E. A. Moritz, regional director of the Reclamation Bureau at Boulder City, Nevada.244 If Murdock had taken the trouble to read Moritz's statement he probably would not have presented it until it had been carefully edited. Moritz was a supporter of the project, but unlike other officials of the Reclamation Bureau, he believed that farmers should be required to pay for some of the benefits they received. This was a deviation from the Bureau line that was nothing short of heresy. Under the project plan, the nation's taxpayers were to pay the cost by sacrificing interest justly due on the loan the Treasury would have to make. Power sales also would help to pay for the project. But, as had been repeatedly shown, the land- owners who got the benefits would not pay enough to offset operation and maintenance charges. Moritz recommended that before the project was con- structed Arizona be required to pass laws halting the wasteful and destructive mining of its underground water |