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43 252,000 acre-feet.111 Conflicting Interior Department Solicitor's General opinions exist on the issue.ll2 Could it be that the NIIP legislation quantified the Navajo Winters right without specifying a quantity? It seems unlikely. Two other points, drawn from outside NIIP's legislative record, contradict the notion that Congress quantified Navajo Winters rights in the course of discussing and authorizing NIIP. Congressman Wayne Aspinall of Colorado chaired the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs while NllP was under discussion, The House committee did not report a NIIP bill out until 1961 because of Aspinall's concern that the project, along with the Chama Diversion, jeopardized his favored project, the Animas-La Plata project. Thus he was the chief congressional force behind section 12(a), holding up NIIP's passage until a bill included it.ll3 He repeatedly asked witnesses before the House Subcommittee on Irrigation and Reclamation if the Navajo were limiting their requests for water to what they got with NllP. Indeed, the portions of the record that support most strongly the argument that NIIP represents quantification of Navajo Winters rights were created by Aspinall. So if it is possible to say that Congress intended to quantify Navajo Winters rights with NIIP, Aspinall would be the author of that intent. l11There is even the possibility of another consumptive use figure of 238,000 acre- feet, with sprinklers. Id. at 4. The differing figures are explained further in Jacobsen, supra. note 29 at 171-172, 112The differing Solicitor's General opinions are explained further in Id. at 171-177. 113~ M. Lawson, "The Navajo Indian Irrigation Project: Muddied Past, Clouded Future," 1976 The Indian Historian 19-29 (1976).