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Show 202 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER a congressional committee are indeed strange," he told the author. "Don't jump to any conclusions yet." The battlefields of the hearing rooms had grown ominously quiet, but that was not true of all of Capitol Hill. In both houses of Congress, California continued a relentless offensive against the Central Arizona Project. Seldom a day passed on which the voices of the project's opponents and proponents were not heard in heated debate, either on the floor or in the Congressional Record. Senator Malone proposed legislation which would direct the President to appoint a board of five eminent engineers to study the project and report their findings to Congress by January 1, 1950.282 Passage of the project, declared Engle, would delay for years important new reclamation and power projects in the entire western United States.282 Arizona was asking for more than twice as much money for a single project as the Reclamation Bureau was asking for new projects in the seventeen western states for the year 1950. "There is a bottom to the reclamation barrel," he cried, "and there is a necessary ceiling for reclamation appropriations." California temporarily lost considerable yardage be- cause of a fumble by the state's attorney-general, Fred Howser.282 On a visit to Washington, Howser had in- formed the California delegation that he fully supported their fight against Arizona. Returning to California he made an address in which he proposed a compromise with Arizona which would have meant surrendering a large part of the state's rights in the Colorado River. |