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Show 170 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER chairmen. Rep. J. Hardin Peterson of Florida presided over the full committee, and Arizona's Rep. Murdock was chairman of the subcommittee. Otherwise the memberships were identical. From every standpoint, this was the big show, the important contest. If California was to stop passage of the Central Arizona Project in the Eighty-first Con- gress, it had to be done in Murdock's committee.216 Quite understandably, Murdock appeared pleased and confident as he opened the hearings on the morning of March 30, 1949. He spoke of HR. 934, his own bill, as a "simple bill," 217 and said, irrelevantly, that op- position to it would come from California's water agencies. However, it was his opinion that California had little reason for its opposition, and was being "used by selfish interests in Southern California" to con- duct a fierce fight against Arizona's rights in the Colo- rado River. "In view of the great mass of misinformation ema- nating from the propagandists in Southern California," he said, "it will require some time throughout the hear- ings to make these facts clear." Rep. Engle, who would lead the fight on the Demo- cratic side against the project, at once pointed out that the Bureau of Reclamation had clearly stated there was not enough water in the Colorado River for the Arizona project if the California contentions were correct.218 "It does not make good sense, does it," he asked,219 "to spend weeks of our time hearing testimony from witnesses ... on the economic and financial feasi- bility of a project for which there is no water? This is utterly ridiculous, in my opinion. "I say that this committee has no jurisdiction. It has |