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Show ij! Echo FearEi Clears Firs? iig Hurdle J In House CoEiisniffee Test lfove House Irrigation Sub-Committee' Approves Measure By 12-5 Vote Despite the continuous attempted stall of the opponents op-ponents of the Echo Park Dam who tried in the Monday test meeting of the House Irrigation Sub-Committee, to delete Echo Park from the initial phase, the committee voted 12 to 5 against the amendment. All of California's three votes on the sub-committee were cast in support of the amendment offered by Rep. John P. Saylor (R., Pa.) to delete de-lete Echo Park from the program. pro-gram. The fifth vote came from Rep. John R. Pillion (R., N.Y.) The decisive 12-5 test vote was regarded as an indication that proponents of the storage program would have little trouble trou-ble with the final passage of the measure which now is expected ex-pected sometime this week. Quorum Trouble After four days of quorum trouble, Chairman William H. Harrison (R., Pa.) had 15 of the 23 members of his sub-committee present for Monday's session. , First the sub-committee defeated de-feated a proposal by Rep. Pillion Pil-lion that authorization of the irrigation projects would automatically auto-matically expire if they weren't started within 10 years. Following, Follow-ing, the sub-committee defeated nine amendments offered by Mr. Saylor. Alternative Sites When Mr. Saylor was rebuffed re-buffed in his efforts to knock out Echo Park, he offered seven different alternative sites to Echo Park which met similar fate. One provided for a high Glen Canyon Dam, another proposed Cross Mountain and Flaming Gorge as a substitute for Echo Park and a third, Gray Canyon and High Desolation sites. Other individual substitutes substi-tutes offered to' Echo Park were New Moab, Dewey, Cross Mountain Moun-tain and Flaming Gorge. Rep. .William A. Dawson (JR., Utah), author of the bill, held that the high Glen Canyon Dam, besides having high evapora-(Continued evapora-(Continued on Back Page) Echo Park Uote . . . (Continued from Page 1) Rainbow Bridge National Monument. Mon-ument. He further noted that tion losses, would threaten the New Moab site would flood the Arches National Monument. During the debate, Mr. Saylor insisted it was untrue that he was opposed to any kind of 1 a development for the Upper Colorado River. He further held that his opposition was "more than a fight to preserve Dinosaur Dino-saur National Monument." To permit each park dam to be built, he claimed, would be "toe in the door" for future invasion of the nation's national parks and monuments. MR. DAWSON REPLIED that the federal government had promised the people in the Echo Park area that the establishment estab-lishment of Dinosaur Monument would not interfere with future plans for a reclamation dam. "I feel the government owes some obligation to the people of the area," said Mr. Dawson. "We are pleading for our very life blood because we are certain cer-tain there is no adequate alternative alter-native site and it would be criminal crim-inal to waste the amount of water sufficient for the needs of a city the size of Denver." THE 12 MEMBERS who voted vot-ed to keep Echo Park Dam in the program included Rep. S. S. Hammer Budge (R., Idaho), Grade Pfost (D., Ida.), Cliff Young (R., Nev.), Dawson, Aspi-nall, Aspi-nall, A. K. Miller (R., Neb.), Jack Westland (R., Wash.), John J. Rhodes (R., Ariz.), Lloyd Bentsen Jr.. (D., Texas), Ken Regan (D., Texas), George H. Bender (R., O.), and E. Y. Berry (R., S.D.) On the only other roll call, regarding whether a high Glen Canyon should be substituted for a low Glen Canyon and Echo Dam, the vote was 13-3. |