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Show THE THREE-RING CIRCUS 199 The big landowners were strong enough to defeat a proposed control law. By 1946, at least 1,700 wells were in operation. Vast desert areas on which there was no surface water were blooming with field crops and groves. Speculation became rampant, and in some areas the water table had lowered to the point where it was becoming costly to pump. It was the speculators who were shouting the loudest for the Central Arizona "rescue project." The project supporters had taken up this plea and had added to it the contention that unless the "rescue" project were built the economy of the entire state of Arizona would be ruined. This, declared Elder, was not the truth.275 He presented evidence obtained from the U. S. Geo- logical Survey and other reliable sources showing that: "Beneath the Central Arizona Project and within a certainly economic pump lift of say, 200 feet . there is a ground water reservoir still nearly filled with water in spite of years of drought and pumping. "The capacity is at least 45,000,000 acre-feet. It is more than ten times the capacity of all the numerous Central Arizona surface reservoirs combined, including those now proposed." Several committee members expressed astonishment at Elder's testimony. Murdock said sarcastically that he, too, was amazed, and that Elder must have good x-ray eyes.276 Elder replied that he did not have x-ray eyes, but that he had the water records of the Geological Survey and of Murdock's own district, and that it had not required much study to compute results. Mere arithmetic had done that. It was plain that Elder had awakened the committee to a new conception of the needs of central Arizona. |
