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Show 208 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER "No similar area on earth," said the Arizona senator, "can present such a variation in so many factors affect- ing human life as can this Colorado Basin. In this basin we find the oldest rocks known to man . area of indescribable beauty . . . the wildest part of the United States." Goldwater told about the ex- peditions of Cabeza de Vaca, Cortes, Ulloa and Alarcon, and the explorations of the Colorado River conducted by Major John Wesley Powell.* Watkins ignored California's chief counsel, Ely, an outstanding authority on water law, but he made the mistake of charging that the immense Central Valley Project of California had caused a great loss to the tax- payers of the United States because water users on it could not repay the cost of the irrigation features. It was Watkins' intention to show that by comparison the crsp was a shining example of financial stability. Oddly enough, Watkins did not present any figures to support his contention. Ely, thereupon, produced Reclamation Bureau figures showing that the irrigators of the Central Valley Project would repay 83.3 per cent of costs allocated to irrigation.249 The Bureau's plan for the crsp stated that its irrigators would repay only 12 to 15 per cent of similar costs. Watkins had nothing more to say about the matter. The California witnesses departed, beaten but un- bowed, and the conservationists once more occupied the stage. * If Cabeza de Vaca was in the Colorado River Basin, historians have never dis- covered the fact. |
