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Show Service naturalist, that the Bridge Canyon project, which was already being considered, would obscure important geologic features. The greatest losses, McKee said, would be in and to the west of Toroweap Valley, in the National Monument, where the rising waters would conceal features illustrating local volcanism and the early stages of canyon cutting, as well as remnants of lavas that flowed down the river channel and sediments showing that, in two places, lakes had formed behind lava dams. The Park Service observed that the upper reaches of the reservoir would lie between Havasu Creek and Kanab Creek, an area deemed by some to be among the most scenic in the National Park. Silt and debris would accumulate in this section of the park, the report predicted. A Diplomatic Silence Strangely, however, the report said the Marble Canyon dam would have little effect on the National Park. This judgment conflicts with the view held by Park Service men now serving at Grand Canyon. It is fair to say that for the National Park Service, an Interior Department agency, to give no quarter in criticizing proposals favored, or likely to be favored, by the Bureau of Reclamation, the Secretary of the Interior, and the House Interior Committee would not be playing the game in the most prudent bureaucratic manner. Bureau of Reclamation officials insist that the objections to construction of the two dams that have been raised by the Sierra Club and its allies in the Park Service and elsewhere have been wildly pessimistic. For example. the Bureau discounts predictions that construction of Marble Canyon dam and of Coconino dam, which would be built on the Little Colorado River to keep Bridge Canyon reservoir from silting up, would leave the Colorado a tame river-too tame, even during spring runoffs, to flush out the boulders and other debris that wash into the river from side canyons to form natural dams and rapids. The Bureau also contends that releases of water* for power generation during hours of peak demand would keep the channel scoured and the river flowing freely. Siltation below Kanab Creek, where the Bridge'Canyon reservoir would begin, would be minimal because the Coconino dam, together with Marble Canyon dam and the de-silting dam on the Paria River, 1604 ould turn the now silt-laden Colorado into trout water, the Bureau says. 1 The Bureau regards conservationists of the Sierra Club type as people who are possibly sincere, but impractical and not a little selfish. Why, otherwise, would they oppose dam projects which, besides serving as "cash registers," would open up the inner canyon to tens of thousands of sightseers who would take boat trips on the reservoirs? Many of the conservationists, for their part, look on the reclamationists as Philistines who would gladly count in "fishermen man-days" to improve a project's cost-benefit ratio but who sneer whenever anyone mentions natural beauty. The Sierra Club says that the dams, besides being a desecration, would not be the best means of producing revenues for the Lower Basin Development Fund. One club study uses the Bureau of Reclamation's own figures as a basis for concluding that the Cen-traT Arizona Project could be paid for without any new revenue-earning facilities at all-just by using the future earnings of Hoover and other existing dams. One expert witness to testify for the Sierra Club at recent House hearings on H.R. 4671 was Alan P. Carlin, a Rand Corporation economist. He said that neither Marble Canyon nor Bridge Canyon dam. despite the admitted flexibility of hydroelectric power in serving peak demands, would be as efficient as a nuclear plant, or a nuclear plant combined with a pumped storage plant, which would use the same water repeatedly by pumping it from a lower to an upper storage basin and running it through the turbines at hours of peak demand. Not only would these plants be cheaper to build than the power dams but transmission costs would be lower, Carlin said. They would be built, not in the bowels of the earth, but in or near urban areas of high power demand. Representative Udall and the Bureau of Reclamation have, of course, contested Carlin's findings. But Udall himself has said that the most significant problem raised by proposals to build nuclear or coal-fired generating plants as an alternative to the dams is not economic but political. Udall has contended, moreover, that, if the federal government doesn't build the dams, they will be built by nonfederal interests. License applications by the Arizona Power Authority and the City of Los Angeles are now pending core the Federal Power Commission, which 2 \ears ago was directed by Congress not to grant licenses for the two sites before 31 December 1966. Even with the expiration of the licensing moratorium, however, the commission may find itself under restraints. Last December a U.S. Court of Appeals told FPC it would have to reconsider its decision to permit construction of a pumped storage plant at Storm King Mountain on the Hudson River. The preservation of natural beauty should be a basic concern in comparing the desirability of the proposed plant with possible alternatives, the court indicated. Because the water importation study is essential to the compromise on H.R. 4671, resistance by the Northwest to the bill's provision for such a study may prove as great an obstacle to passage as the conservationists' opposition to the Grand Canyon dams. This study is not easily reconciled with the study which the proposed National Water Commission would undertake. A bill to create the commission, submitted by the administration and sponsored by Senator Henry M. lackson of Washington, chairman of the Senate Interior Committee, and 48 other senators, was passed by the Senate on 9 June. The commission, to be made up of seven private citizens, would have 5 years to study water resource policy problems in a national perspective. Its mandate, as defined in the Interior Committee's report, would be to consider alternative solutions to water problems "without prior commitment to any interest group, region, or agency of government." Coolness in the Committee The commission bill has struck few sparks of enthusiasm in the House Interior Committee, where its fate now rests. Supporters of H.R. 4671 are understandably reluctant to trust such a commission to come up with a water importation plan for the Colorado basin. Yet, unless they can agree to do so. the reclamation states will be seriously divided on the bill, for there is little chance that Senator Jackson and the Northwest ever will agree to the importation study. It is now proposed that the study be placed under the aegis of the new interagency Water Resources Council, which Secretary Udall chairs, but this supposedly mollifying gesture isn't likely to soften the opposition. Indeed, Jackson has rejected even a proposal to have the SCll NCE, VOL. 152 |
