BOARD00887

• Board Meeting Date: 7/8/1966
• Description: Minutes
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

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think we have them in our group and I think
the other side has them.

In Washington we had, as some of you un-
doubtedly know, some difficulties in getting 1
this bill out of the House Subcommittee in spite
of this 13 to 5 vote. Now the difficulties
came about, not because of overwhelming opposi-
tion particularly to the bill or any particular
terms of it, but they came about because of the
fact that you have to have present at all times
in the Subcommittee what's known as a 'live
quorum'. That simply means that you have to
have II bodies present, sitting there in those
chairs, before you can have business done. One
of the toughest things that we had to do in the
last three or four weeks, while the Subcommittee
was considering that bill, was to see that we
had the bodies present in those chairs. For-
tunately, we didn't care much at this point
whether those bodies were for us or against us
because as long as we had a quorum present,
due to the makeup of the subcommittee which is
predominantly from the western states, we had
the votes and we knew it. But the other oppo-
sition that is strong on the bill comes from
the 'nature lovers', as we term them; that is,
those people who are opposed to construction
of Bridge and ~rble Canyon Dams. They claim
all kinds of things. There is no use talking
to this group and telling them what their claims
are but they still are saying that we are going
to ruin the Grand Canyon, flood it, and all
that type of tiling.

We are faced with a rather peculiar sit-
uation at the present time witil regard to this
legislation. One of the peculiarities that I
have run into back there is keeping our sister I
states in the Lower Basin cognizant of the fact
that we have a vital interest in that bill.
That bill started out, as you know, as tile
Lower Colorado River Basin Bill with the Cen-
tral Arizona project being the main theme of
it. And due to the work that was done by your