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o C,') t-" t..v 0) >,.('. 68 .\.," COLORADO MAGAZINE bel', HJ33. Many said, after reading these, that the cost would be too great for us ever to get the proposed works built. Early in 1934, the Northern Colorado \Vater Users Associa- tion employed ,J. M. Dille as half-time manager. The next year he was put. on full-time salary. The board members of the association became a central force to forward the project. They wer!' seasoned community builders, held in high esteem in communities from the foothills of the Rockies to the Nebraska line. L. L. Stimson and his party began the survey at Granby reservoir on the Colorado river. It was the attorneys' job to lay groundwork, to find ways to organize, to finance, to interest the right state and federal agencies. j to see to the legislation. There had to be evolved a new kind of . entit.y which could create and administer the project on a basis that would permit a large community legally to share its benefits and burdens. As at.torneys, Tom Nixon and I had plenty to do beginning in August, 1933. I<'irst, ".'e started with an application to the Public Works Administration. We finished drafting our proposal on Labor Day. Then we tried the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. A new application to the Public Works Administration, with Charles D. Todd as counsel, was assembled in November, 1933. Moses E. Smith was sent to 'Washington in February, 1934, to introduce the projcct to Reclamation Commissiol~er Elwood Mead. By the fall of 1934, it was plain to us that if we obtained f1nancing --it would have to come through the Bureau of Reclamation. Ac- cordingly, we telephoned E. B. Debler, New Projects Engineer of t.he U. S. Bureau of Reclamation in Denver. He was encouraging- and became a valuable guide from that day. Early in 1935, a "revenue bond" act, designed to finance such projects as ours, passed in the Colorado General Assembly. It did not, however, receive 1<'ederal acceptance. '1'he following May, Han- sen, Nixon alld I went to Washington where we discnssed the pro- posed water project with Senator .Alva B. Adams, Congressman Cummings, Elwood Mead and. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes. Soon afterwards a survey fund of $150,000 was granted by Secretary Ickes. 'l'his provided skilled Bureau of Reclamation engineering service for us that year. Tn 1936, after much research as attorneys, we found a legal framework adaptable to our peculiar needs, in the California Golden Gate Bridge District multi-county legislation, which had been proven in several years of court tests. We built on that, plus a 1935 variat.ion of it for municipalities in Utah. 'rhe California legislation combined a general tax and special rates. We had to evolve a rather ";;