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Show Senate PassesColoradoSiver Bill; Congress Gears For House Figlif ' Attempt To Delete Echo Park From Bill Fs&Mb decisively; Hcuse Approval Is Next Big Hurdle ' " l - I RE-ELECTED as Chairman of the 21 Counties Committee at the recent annual meeting, was B. H. Stringham. state Senator from Vernal. An ardent fighter for water and reclamation for the West, he is spending a lot of time in Washington working for Echo Park Dam. A tremendous victory was gained in Washington Wednesday as the Senate gave its approval to the gigantic Upper Colorado River Storage Project as it breezed through in record time by a more than two to one vote. Also decisively de-cisively stopped was an attempt to knock out the Echo Park phase from the bill. Representatives i n Congress from the vitally interested states, of Utah, Wyoming, Colorado Col-orado and New Mexico, now can concentrate their efforts on the House of Representatives where a tougher fight is anticipated. Passage of the more than billion bil-lion dollar water and power program pro-gram came after three days of Senate debate. The real test came on the amendment of Sen. Richard Rich-ard L. Neuberger (D-Ore.) to delete de-lete the controversial Echo Park Dam from the bill. This was beaten beat-en down by 52-30. .Bill Wins 58 to 23 Less than an hour later the bill, known as S500, cleared the Senate Sen-ate 58-23. Sen. Arthur V. Watkins, (R-Utah) (R-Utah) hailed the impressive victory vic-tory and predicted it would "contribute "con-tribute some needed momentum and enthusiasm needed to win a similar victory in the House of Representatives this session." "If the bill passes in the House, and I am firmly convinced that it will, it is possible that dirt will fly on this tremendous water development de-velopment program before the end of 1955." Important Step Sen. Wallace F. Bennett (R-Utah) (R-Utah) described the vote as "an important step ahead for the Upper Up-per Colorado Project." "Our strategy of moving quickly quick-ly without giving our opposition a chance to develop undue strength apparently worked well," said Sen. Bennett. The Senate victory was achieved in the face of active opposition from two strong lobbies. One was the Southern California water group which battled the project:, as a whole. The other was the-conservation the-conservation bodies which opposed! the Echo Park Dam because its reservoir would flood a postion of Dinosaur National Monument. West States United Aside from California's Republican Repub-lican Senators, William Knowland and Thomas H. Kuchel, there was no western opposition to the bill. Sen. Neuberger voted against Echo Park but supported the measure for final passage. An analysis of the Echo Park (Continued on Back Page) COLORADO RIVER . . . (Continued from page one! vote shows that 29 Republicans and 23 Democrats joined the fiht ' to save the dam which has been described as the wheel-horse of the entire Upper Colorado pro. gram. Voting to delete Echo Pari , were 21 Democrats and nine fe- f publicans. The program, which proponents have stated would result in th doubling of Utah's population, ii-eludes ii-eludes authorization for six storage stor-age dams and 12 participating or irrigation projects in the four-state area. It also provides for conditional condi-tional authorization for 21 other irrigation projects. ; The Utah irrigation projects are Central Utah, Emery County and Gooseberry. The storage dams, .besides Echo Park, are Glen Canyon in Arizona and Utah; Flaming Gorge, in Utah and Wyoming; Juniper and Cure-canti Cure-canti in Colorado, and Navajo, in New Mexico. |