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<br />The Central Arizona Project:
<br />A Review of Events 1966-67
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<br />The fight for Colorado River water took on a now-or-never
<br />character as the new fiscal year opened. There was much to be
<br />done and little time in which to do it. The Colorado River
<br />development legislation containing the Central Arizona Project
<br />was out of the House Subcommittee on Irrigation and Reclama-
<br />tion, but it had yet to clear the parent Committee on Interior
<br />and Insular Affairs, then the House itself and, after that, the
<br />Senate. And, with the off-year elections upcoming, Congress
<br />would be going home soon, barring a national crisis. Finally,
<br />if Congress adjourned without approving CAP, nobody could
<br />be sure but that the next Congress-in the wake of traditional
<br />off-year attrition of administration strength at the polls-would
<br />be even less sympathetic to CAP than this Congress.
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<br />Even now, it was touch-and-go in the lower House. Ben
<br />Cole, the Arizona Republic's Washington correspondent, counted
<br />157 votes for CAP and 196 votes against it. That left some 80
<br />indifferent or undecided votes, and Arizona would have to get
<br />three out of every four of them. It would, said Mr. Cole, be a
<br />"cliff-hanger." "Cutting deepest against the vital Arizona bill,"
<br />he wrote, "is the fantastic crusade mounted by theconserva-
<br />tionists against it. The publicity being distributed by those who
<br />want to keep Bridge and Marble Canyon dams out of the Colo-
<br />rado River gorge is convincing millions that the Grand Canyon
<br />is about to be flooded rim-to-rim." ,
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<br />If, in spite of all this, the Central Arizona Project won
<br />approval, said Mr. Cole, "some day the people of Arizona will
<br />turn on their taps or water their fields with a supply that will
<br />rome so easily that they are not likely to remember the nerve-
<br />.. wracking toil that has gone into this 40-y'ear struggle."
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<br />Governor Defends the Dams
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<br />Early in July Gov. Sam Goddard carried the fight for CAP
<br />to Los Angeles, where the National Governors Conference was
<br />to be held. With him he took a plastic scale model, 13 by 25
<br />feet, of the Grand Canyon, which was mounted at the Century
<br />Plaza Hotel, the conference headquarters. There he called a
<br />press conference and, using the model for illustration, Governor
<br />Goddard demonstrated how the two dams could be built without
<br />doing vital harm to the heart of the canyon. The national park
<br />area, he pointed out, would be almost untouched by the waters
<br />to be impounded. "There is no way that you could even see where
<br />the water to be stored would be without having to shoot the
<br />rapids or ride a mule all day," said the governor.
<br />
<br />Answering the Sierra Club's complaint that the dams would
<br />eliminate the sport of white-water river running through the
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