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Show i McKay Bill Would Override Court Order on Lake Waters Democratic Congressman Congress-man Gunn McKay announced an-nounced last week that he would introduce legislation leg-islation in the House to strike down the legal basis for the Rainbow Bridge decision. The federal court decision ordered the Interior Department De-partment to release sufficient suf-ficient water from Lake Powell to remove all water from the Rainbow Bridge Monument. "That decision is contrary con-trary to the interests of Utah." McKay said. "It would require the immediate release of over 4 million acre-feet of water, and would cause a continuing loss of over a million acre-feet acre-feet a year. Power revenues reve-nues would drop by an estimated S3 million annually, an-nually, and the decision would certainly interfere inter-fere with the legal requirements re-quirements for water to Upper and Lower Basin States." A 1956 statute prohibits pro-hibits water from backing back-ing into any national monument, McKay explained. ex-plained. This provision was designed to protect Dinosaur National Monument Mon-ument from waters of the proposed Echo Park Dam. This dam was never constructed, McKay Mc-Kay said, which seemed to make the 1956 restriction re-striction irrelevant. Operating Op-erating criteria for Lake Powell, established by Congress in 1968, also conflict with the 1956 statute. "Because of this conflict." con-flict." McKay said, "and because of the language contained in various appropriations ap-propriations bills, I felt that the earlier legislation legis-lation had been repealed by implication. The court disagreed, and if the court's position is sustained on appeal, then it will be imperative that we explicitly repeal the '56 provision." McKay said that the time required to pass a !! bill made it necessary to begin the legislative processes now, even though the matter had -not proceeded through all the appeals stages. He added that he had spoken to other con-gressmen con-gressmen in the affected affect-ed states, and they shared his concern. McKay Mc-Kay said he hoped these ' representatives would " join him in the legislation legisla-tion seeking to resolve the problem. |