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Show 196 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER on which the dam would stand are "poorly cemented and relatively weak in comparison with the foundations com- mon to most high dams." The secretary also revealed that "experiments to improve the strength of the foundation through a chemical grouting process were unsuccessful." Further, although the Bureau has presented preliminary plans for a seven-hundred-foot dam, it does not intend to present final specifications for it until after Congress has approved the present vague project. On this subject, Secretary McKay wrote Brower: "Following congressional authorization, more intensive studies will be made of the foundation conditions and of the Bureau's preliminary design to secure information for the presentation of plans and specifications for construction of the Glen Canyon Dam. If such intensive studies indicate the advisability of modifying the present selected height of dam, appropriate changes will be made in the designs prior to construction." In other words, Congress is being asked to approve spending this great sum of federal money when Reclama- tion Bureau engineers do not know what the final plans and designs may be, how big the dam would be, how much it would cost, how much power revenues it would bring, and when there are grave doubts that such a structure would be secure. Thus, Congress is being asked to buy a pig in a poke. The secretary's disclosures refute a 1950 report of the Reclamation Bureau which stated that the rock at the dam site "is remarkably free of structural defects." This 1950 report also said: "The Glen Canyon site is geologically favorable for a high concrete dam." Secretary McKay told Brower: "Subsequent to writing the 1950 report on the Colorado River storage project, the Bureau conducted grouting tests in the drift tunnels driven fifty or more feet into each canyon wall of the Glen Canyon dam site. Also, special bearing tests of six-inch cores and large fragments of the foundation materials were made in the Bureau's Denver |