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Show 270 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER The Reclamation Bureau continued its refusal to admit that the All American Canal had been completed. Its reasons were not a mystery. Under the contract between the Federal Government, which loaned the money to build the canal, and the Imperial Irrigation District, which had agreed to pay for it, the Bureau was obligated to turn over operation and maintenance of the canal to the district upon its completion. If the Bureau complied with that provision of the contract, it would lose a large amount of Federal money allotted to it to operate and maintain the canal. The fact that this money might be saved to the taxpayers by turning the canal over to the district did not enter into the Bureau's thinking. There was, however, another reason why the Bureau refused to abide by the contract. Arizona did not want the district to gain full control of the canal, and the Bureau always sided with Arizona against California. There was a good reason for that, too. The Bureau wanted to build the Central Arizona Project, the largest reclamation development ever proposed to Congress. When the appropriation bill for the Interior Depart- ment for the fiscal year 1952-1953 was submitted to Congress there was in it an appropriation for operation and maintenance of the "uncompleted" All American Canal. The House Appropriations Committee looked into the matter, and what it learned it did not like. The canal, it discovered, had been completed several years before, and should have been turned over to the Imperial Irrigation District. The committee not only refused to give the Bureau the requested money, but it ordered the Secretary of the Interior to come to terms at once with the district. With- |