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Show Our Needed Dams, Irrigation j Projects May Be Within Reach Basin People's Help By Writing Letters Will Determine Fate The taming of a vast river system sys-tem is never a short-term proposition. propo-sition. First there is the dream, then there are the plans, developed develop-ed carefully over a preat space of time, and then, finally, sometimes almost a rentiTv later, there is the completed project. This is particularly true of one of America'"! mort wild and unruly rivers, the Colorado. But people of the Upper Bastn states now feel that their most cherished project, the Upper Colorado Colo-rado Storage project, is within reach of actuality. More than 30 years ago, In 1922 the seven states along the mighty Colorado river 'Arizona, Calif., Colorado. New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming) agreed to a division of the waters which flow from the Rocky Mountains in Colorado Co-lorado and Wyoming, across the arid lands of Utah, Nevada and Arizona and into the Gulf of California. Cali-fornia. The water of the Colorado was divided at Lee's Ferry, with 75 million acre feet to go to the lower basin states of Arizona. California and Nevada everv decade, and the remaining 75 million acre feet to go to the four unner basin states of Colorado, New Mexico. Utah and Wyoming. Lower Basin Developed The development of the lower basin got under way in 1928 with the construction of Hoover Dam; Parker and Davis dams followed, along with the All-Amcrican and Coachella canals and two huge aqueducts, aq-ueducts, one to Los Angeles and the other to San Diego. At the same time plans were being be-ing made for the development of ' the upper Colorado river. These plans, completed after years of study stu-dy and $5 million worth of tests by the Bureau of Reclamation and the Upper Colorado River Commission, Com-mission, call for the control of the entire basin. The project was presented to Congress last year, but did not come to a vote. This year the pro ponents will submit their plans again. In the years since the completed plans were published, the residents of the Upper Colorado Basin have found that getting approval of a great river project is not a simple matter. Powerful Opposition The opposition to the Upper Colorado Co-lorado River Storage project ha if WATER LIFEBLOOD FOR AGRICULTURE Setting siphons to put water in crop rows from an irrigation ditch in the arid West, this farmer knows that water is the difference for him between a good life and failure. been well financed and powerful. It centered at first on the fact that one of the major dams will be constructed con-structed at Tat Lynch Hole (now called Echo Park) on the Green river, three miles downstream from the Yampa and just on the Colorado side of the Colorado-Utah border. This dam, which will store millions mill-ions of acre feet of water and provide pro-vide great power potential for a growing industrial area, is one of the most important in the entire project. But opponents of the over-all project pro-ject pointed out that the dam is planned for an expanded portion of a national monument. They overlooked over-looked the fact that when the monument mon-ument was expanded in 1938, Presi dent Roosevelt specifically exempted exempt-ed the area from the provisions which make it illegal to build dams in a national monument. Other opponents have attacked1 the repayment provisions of the project; yet these provisions call for the mort complete repayment of principal and interest of any major reclamation project propos-scd propos-scd in half a century. All To Be Repaid Unlike Hoover Dam, there are no flood control provisions in the Upper Colcrado River Storage project; pro-ject; flood control and navigation projects are not required to be repaid, re-paid, but the Colorado River project pro-ject will all be repaid, much of it with interest. The members of Congress from the Upper Basin States are wholeheartedly whole-heartedly in favor of the project. But they need help in getting Congressional Con-gressional approval. Residents of tho Basin states raw put this project over by writing to members of Congress, newspaper newspap-er editors and friends in ether parts of the country, explaining the value of the project to the area. and asking them to write to other I . , inenas. Those who live in the parts of the country where rain is merely a nuisance cannot readily understand under-stand that water is the lifcblood of the arid West. Yet the people of the West, to whom water is the most important factor in their daily lives, can put the message across if each individual individ-ual will do his port for all. |