OCR Text |
Show 17 2 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER The failure of the project bill in the Eighty-third Congress had set fires of fury burning in the Upper Basin. A frenzied new offensive against opposing forces was launched. The main targets were the Colorado River Board of California, the conservationists, and such stubborn men in Congress as Reps. Saylor and Hosmer, who still maintained that a federal project should be economically feasible. Upper Basin leaders called for what they termed a great campaign of education and enlightenment.185 They stirred up the people with a sinister warning that the project's day of reckoning was at hand, and that the crucial battle to save the life-giving waters of the Colo- rado must soon be fought. The positive must be ac- cented to contrast with the negativism of the opposition. The emotionalism of the bird lovers must be supplanted by sane thinking and true conservation of water re- sources. Money, large amounts of it, must be secured to finance a last-ditch stand. The administration's intentions could not have been more clearly revealed and recorded than they were by three men who visited the Upper Basin states in the summer and fall of 1954. The men were Senator Know- land of California, then still Senate majority leader, Vice-president Nixon, and the President himself. Knowland told Utah party rallies that the Senate would pass the crsp bill early in the coming Congress.186 California, said Knowland, did not want any of the water that belonged to the Upper Basin, and emphasized that he could see no reason for conflict between Upper Basin interests and California. He cautioned against family quarrels among reclamation states, and opined that a little statesmanship on both sides would permit the crsp to go forward. |