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Show 88 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER port for California's effort to get into the Supreme Court, charged that California had in mind only the idea of delaying congressional action on the project. Seeking ways and means to win support for Arizona, the Reclamation Bureau injected a new issue into the mounting uproar. Assistant Secretary of the Interior Warne proposed that Southern California be supplied with water from the Columbia River. No one knew better than the officials of the Bureau that such a project was not only infeasible, but under present conditions was ridiculous. The Northwest States would not permit their water to be diverted to California, even if Cali- fornia needed it, which it most certainly did not. No one knew better than Bureau officials that enormous amounts of water were wasting into San Francisco Bay, flowing down from Northern California. Before any sensible person would propose bringing water into California from the Columbia, the unused Northern California water would have to be fully utilized. More- over, such a plan was then being formulated. The Bureau officials were well apprised of that fact, too. Warne's proposal, declared Poulson,69 had been made for "the sole purpose of inciting animosity from the people of the Northwest against the people of Cali- fornia." The Metropolitan Water District of Southern Cali- fornia quickly issued a statement charging Warne with "an attempt to distract the attention of Congress." No California agency, it said, sought to import water from outside the state of California. The stage was set for the committee battles in both houses of Congress on the resolutions to take the old Colorado River controversy to the court of last resort. |