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oa2:5~~' '. California Offers Its Version On Februllry 7 " new Colorado River bill was introduced in the Senate by Sen"tor Kuchel. It bore the imprimatur of the Colorado River Board of California and contained what the l.'dall Pllckage did not: Hualapai Dam (but not Marble Can- yon), a water diversion study, a 4.4-million-acre-foot guarantee for California and a ban on FPC licensing of any dams between L:lke Mead and Glen Canyon. Sen"tor Kuchel said the bill had the approval of California's new governor, Ronald Reagan, who, said the senS'ltor, considered the me"sure to meet three prime requirements: (1) Meaningful steps to augment the inadequate flows of the Colorado River; (2) protection of existing Lower Basin uses, including 4.4 million acre feet annually for Cali- fnrnia, and (3) recognition that dependable water supply in the lower Colorado Basin was insufficient both for existing uses and the proposed new Central Arizona Project. Speaking in his home state a few days after he introduced his bill. Senator Kuchel s"id its passage was an absolute must if'there was to be enough water for California's expected popu- lation of 50 million by the year 2000. He said the Udall plan ,Vas little more than a "stripped down" proposal for building CAP, and construction of the project without any guarantees for augmentation of the river's water supply "would spell dis- aster to the remaining Basin states." "There is no sound reason," said Sen"tor Kuchel. "for shifting the use of water from its historical uses-tHking it off the table in Los Angeles and off land in Coachella Valley-merely to service new uses in Phoenix and Tucson." On February i3 the months of talk and plannIng relative to.a go-it-alone approach came finally to a head with theintro- duction of a bill in the Arizon" legislature to enable the state to build CAP itself. Sponsored in the Senate by that body's Committee on Natural Resources, the bill proposed to authorize the Arizona Power Authority to build the two dams and work jointly with the Arizona Interstate Stream Commission to finance the big project at an estimated cost of $823 million. Fifty-year revenue bonds would be issued to finance it, ",nd the bonds would be retired throuJrh the sale of water and of electricity produced by the dams. Other works specified in the bill included Granite Reef aqueduct to bring the water from Lake Havasu to Granite Reef dam northeast of Phoenix, Orme Dam reservoir on the Salt River Indian Reservation, Buttes Dam reservoir on the Gila River southeast of Phoenix, the, Salt-Gila aqueduct from Granite Reef to Picacho Reservoir and thence to Tucson by aqueduct and Charleston Dam on the San Pedro River southeast of Tucson. A number of pump storage projects also would be developed along the main canal. -44-