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Show Parade Of Witnesses Urge Dam Okeh M Washington Echo Park Hearing Utah Represented By Senators, Congressmen, Private Citizens WASHINGTON A parade of, witnesses, including a score of Utah public and civic officials, Monday presented a well organized organ-ized appeal to Secretary of the Interior Oscar L. ' Chapman for his prompt authorization of the proposed Echo Park and Split Mountain dams. Secretary Chapman presided at the hearings, which he called to hear complaints from the National Na-tional Parks service and gther opposition factions that are contending con-tending that the proposed dams on the Green and Yampa rivers would destroy some of the value and natural beauties of the Dinosaur Di-nosaur national monument. What could be regarded as no more than minor opposition developed de-veloped during the first five hours of the public hearings. Highlight of the afternoon session ses-sion was the unscheduled and dramatic plea for the project by Senator Eugene D. Millikin (R., Colo.), who described the Echo Park and Split Mountain sites as the best -possible locations, loca-tions, and said any of the suggested sug-gested alternative sites would be unsound and result in the loss of several hundred thousand acre-feet of water. Earlier in the day, three other oth-er senators and three members of Congress, including the 'entire 'en-tire Utah delegation to Washington, Wash-ington, pleaded for the upper Colorado river storage project. They were Senator Elbert D. Thomas, (D., Utah), Senator Arthur V. Watkins (R., Utah), Senator Edwin D. Johnson (D., Colo.), Reva Beck Bosone and Walter K. Granger, Utah's two members to Congress, and Rep. Frank Barrett, of Wyoming. i Newton B. Drury. director" of the National Park service, headed the opposition to building build-ing Echo Park dam in Dinosaur National monument. "We believe there are feasible feas-ible alternative sites, Mr. Drury said, "and this belief is based on the studies of the reclamation reclama-tion engineers themselves." Mr. Drury did not mention any specific alternative sites, but insisted that Flaming Gorge and not Echo Park was the main diversion point for irrigation water to Central Utah. In addition, ad-dition, he held that Glen canyon can-yon dam, on the main stem of the Colorado river ,is "the principal prin-cipal storage reservoir in the upper basin to deliver water to the lower states under the Colorado Colo-rado river compact, and will meet adequately the compact agreement in combination with storage provided in other feasible feas-ible alternative reservoirs now being considered in the upper basin." |