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Show THE WESTERN WEB 17 Central Arizona Project brought the old controversy into sharp new focus. No debate or discussion of the project could be carried on without the interjection of the long-standing inter-state differences. Thus, California found itself in June 1947, facing not one battle but a continuing series of battles: (1) directly against the Central Arizona Project; (2) on the old battlefield of the Colorado River controversy, and (3) against the proposals of the Reclamation Bureau which, California was convinced, would stand as in- surmountable barriers before not only its own develop- ment but that in all the West. From the very beginning the Senate discussion of the proposed Central Arizona Project had its roots in history. The Colorado River Controversy, which at one time had brought the two States to the verge of armed war- fare, was no nearer settlement in 1947 than it had been in 1917. This was the immense stage across which the issues paraded: One-twelfth of the land area of the United States was drained by the Colorado River. Down from the highest western mountains, across the great plateaus of forest and desert, and through the deepest canyons of the continent, the Colorado flowed some sixteen hundred miles to its delta in the Gulf of California. Compared to some other American rivers, the Colo- rado was not big, but no other river in the country had been the source of more legal and political troubles, and no other river meant more to the people it served. It was in 1857 that a brave explorer but a poor |
