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<br />f <br /> <br />, <br /> <br />I <br />f <br />t <br /> <br />OOZ5JO <br /> <br />The Sierra Club director tangled likewise with Chairman <br />Aspinall of the House Interior Committee, who was a speaker <br />at the meeting. In the hall outside the meeting room, as a photog- <br />rapher snapped them standing together, the congressman ex- <br />ploded at Brower, "You've been telling a bunch of damn lies <br />. to the newspaper and now you want your picture taken with <br />me!" Mr. Brower, according to the UPI, "just looked startled." <br /> <br />While the reclamationists were, meeting in Albuquerque, <br />Secretary Udall announced in Washington that the Interior <br />Department shortly would complete its restudy of the Colorado <br />River Basin project. It would, he said, include a comparison <br />of programs utilizing steam and hydro power for revenue. <br /> <br />State CAP Only Option: Lohse <br /> <br />As Arizonans awaited the report, they contemplated a <br />startling statement made by Stream Commissioner Lohse in a <br />talk before the Pima County Republican Club at Tucson. He <br />said a state-financed CAP would cost about a billion dollars <br />more than a federal project because of the state's more limited <br />horrowing power and thus higher interest costs. Yet, he went <br />on, Arizona had exhausted all other avenues and had no option <br />but to move forward with a state plan. Unless it did so, he said, <br />and showed "a willingness to act without depending on support <br />from California or New Mexico or anyone else," it could not <br />get a federal project. Private financing was available, said Mr. <br />Lohse, "but we're going to have to bind Arizona together as it <br />never has been before." <br /> <br />He said that once Arizona had arranged its own financing <br />and had its plans complete for a state CAP. it could then go to <br />the federal government and put its cards on the table. It would <br />be, in a better position to get legislation fora federal CAP. <br /> <br />In Las Vegas, Nev., there were echoes of the Stream Com- <br />mission's announcement which revoked all of Arizona's commit- <br />ments to other states. At a meeting of the Colorado River Water <br />Users Association, Joseph Jensen, chairman of the Metropolitan <br />Water District of Southern California, accused Arizona of re- <br />neging on its agreements in an attempt to sabotage interstate <br />cooperation on the Colorado. He said the Stream Commission <br />could not "terminate the commitments of Arizona so easily" and <br />added that a peculiar situation existed in Arizona. "We have <br />the Stream Commission taking a very definite position, we have <br />the two senators sitting still and doing nothing and we have <br />an aggressive group in the House willing to cooperate. Even if <br />the Stream Commission says that all commitments and guar- <br />antees of the state are off, and the Commission wants to do <br />something, it so happens that members of Congress are quite <br />independent of the Stream Commission. If anything comes from <br />Congress, it will not come through the Stream Commission." <br /> <br />-29- <br />