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Show 16 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER projects, Downey was fully aware that precisely what S. 1175 proposed, he had long warned was being fabri- cated in the Reclamation Bureau of the Interior De- partment. This was a new program which would radically change the laws governing reclamation and power developments so that an almost absolute control over them would be vested in the hands of a few Wash- ington bureaucrats. Downey saw in the program an unprecedented menace to western progress, and on numerous occasions he had told friends and colleagues: "There is a monster, a fantastic, unbelievable monster being created, and unless it is stopped it will destroy the economy of the West." Now he saw the skeletal structure of that "monster" clearly revealed in the clauses and provisions of the bill before him. Behind the senators at the table were arrayed a hundred or more persons, a few newspapermen, secre- taries, committee clerks, witnesses from half a dozen western states who would be called to testify, and an assortment of the unidentified people who customarily turned up at congressional hearings, no matter what the subject to be considered. The reasons for California's presence in the fore- front of the assault on S. 1175 were obvious. The bill proposed an immense diversion from the lower Colorado River, a diversion that would jeopardize California's own water supplies from that stream. Those supplies were needed by California to meet the ever-increasing demands of a soaring population and an expanding industry. Moreover, for nearly three decades California had engaged Arizona in a bitter fight over the division of the waters of the Colorado River, and the proposed |
