OCR Text |
Show 104 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER long fight against the project there was little or no cooperation between the two major forces of opposition. Each fought the battle according to its own plans and its own strategy, and although the front was often a common one, the goals each sought were not the same. The conservationists did not want to defeat the pro- ject; they wanted to eliminate Echo Park Dam from it. If they had to defeat the entire project to accomplish their desired end, they were willing to do it, but that was not their aim. California did not want to halt all development of Colorado River water in the Upper Basin states, but to be certain that the crsp was not going to impair or destroy the great projects in the Lower Basin, and California wanted to be assured that its contracts and appropriative rights were not to be invalidated or even menaced. So the two forces, flying the banners of their own policies, had marched toward Capitol Hill. The Upper Basin forces were there, firmly entrenched, and there was to be no quarter given by either side. Following the hearings in January 1954, before the House Interior subcommittee, both sides withdrew to replenish ammunition supplies and contemplate the situation. The lull was short-lived, however, and while the House committee had upon it the weight of execu- tive conferences over the bill, the pot shots bgan to fly, mostly out of the Appendix to the Congressional Record, but at times on the floors of the House and Senate. Many newspapers quickly took up the cudgels for the conservationists, among them such influential ones as the New York Times126 and the Los Angeles Times.127 The Times on each coast saw the dam as a threat to the National Park system, and the Upper Basin was to find |