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Show LAST LEGISLATIVE FIGHT 245 his colleagues that the President's commission had found that it would cost $2,200 an acre to put water on the Arizona project. "California has always contended," said Engle,348 "that putting water on the land under the Central Ari- zona Project would cost close to $2,000 an acre in capital investment. But Arizona has always pooh-poohed those charges. "Now we have it on high authority: The President's Water Resources Commission." In an effort to take some of the sting out of Secretary Chapman's statement that the project would mean a loss in interest to the taxpayers of more than two billion dollars, Arizona presented a table having to do with Federal expenditures for water conservation and control since the founding of the nation. The total received by Arizona was comparatively small, and this fact was ad- vanced as evidence to show that Arizona had been neglected. As they perused the table, committee members shook their heads in astonishment. Arizona had been a state only thirty-six years, yet the amount received by it was compared with amounts received by states which had been in the Union since its formation. The table simply did not make sense, and although this was made clear in the committee, Murdock ordered it printed in the record.349 After fourteen days of hearings, some committee mem- bers, not a little baffled by the mass of conflicting evi- dence and wearied by the pressure, decided that it would be worth their time and a justified expense to journey to the Lower Basin and observe the scene with their own |