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Show 242 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER development. Its timing is to coincide with the crucial phase of the fight over the Central Arizona Project. "The political stupidity of the Bureau of Reclamation is well known and this is no exception. I hope my colleagues in the House will beware of it." If the committee, and especially the new members, became confused at times, there was good reason for it. Engineers from the Reclamation Bureau and Arizona continued to defend the feasibility of the project, con- tending that it would pay out, and the nation's tax- payers would not lose a penny. California engineers as consistently maintained that the losses to the taxpayers would run into billions. From Engineer Dallas Cole of the California Colorado River Board came a statement which told the committee the subsidy for each 160-acre farm in the project would amount to $1,360,000. This was an inconceivable figure, but the California engineer declared it was derived from the figures con- tained in the Reclamation Bureau's own report on the project How the subsidy total was reached is shown in the following analysis: |