Wrong!

Those states had a memory lapse of huge magnitude. They conveniently forgot that when the Upper Colorado Storage Project (which authorized works to use the Upper Basin’s Colorado River water) was before the Congress, Arizona fought valiantly on the side of our sister states in the Colorado Basin. Stewart Udall and I were on the Interior Committee and we took an active part in the committee hearings and in the floor debate.

But gratitude is short-lived, and the CAP was attacked from various angles. First, doubts were cast on the availability of the amounts of water necessary to give the CAP viability Then, environmentalists attacked the plan to build a dam at Bridge Canyon to provide electric power to lift water from behind Parker Dam to the tunnel through the Buckskin Mountains.

The opposition painted lurid pictures of Bridge Canyon Dam inundating the entire Grand Canyon. Many of our colleagues from other parts of the country were frightened at the possibility of the destruction of one of our great national treasures. Actually, the Bridge Canyon Dam water impoundment could not have been noticed from the rim of the Grand Canyon. Water would not have been backed up even into the Grand Canyon National Park, and certainly not into the main sections of the canyon, but the opponents were not to be persuaded.

That was the bad news. The good news was that California, after losing the Supreme Court case, did a complete reversal and became a staunch proponent of the CAP. By this time, 1968, Lyndon Johnson was President and Stewart Udall was Secretary of the Interior. Stewart became convinced that we could not overcome the environmentalists, even though their case was deeply faulted. He floated a plan to delete the Bridge Canyon Dam and substitute a coal-fired electric generating facility to provide power to lift the CAP water. This plant would be built near the Glen Canyon Dam so that cooling water from part of Arizona’s Upper Basin allotment could be used.

The environmentalists hailed this as a great victory and dropped their opposition to the CAP. Not so the Upper Basin states. The chairman of the House Interior Committee was Wayne Aspinall of Colorado, and he continued the search for reasons to defeat the CAP.

The Congressional Reform Act had been passed in 1946, providing, among other things, that the Congress would adjourn each year on July 31. So, on July 31, 1968, Chairman Aspinall announced that, being a law-abiding person, he was personally adjourning, leaving all Interior Committee business that was unfinished, unfinished. That included the CAP bill.

Morris Udall, Stewart’s brother and successor in Congress, was my effective and faithful ally in the CAP effort. We protested, made speeches and pleaded, but to no avail. Wayne Aspinall went home to Colorado. We were dead, not in the water but without water.

Soon after Aspinall’s departure I was at a meeting with Floyd Dominy, the Commissioner of Reclamation, a veteran with great Washington experience. He laid out a plan which made sense. Senator Hayden was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and of its Public Works Subcommittee. I was ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Public Works. The rules of the Senate were, and are, very loose. It was perfectly possible to amend, in the Senate, the Public Works Appropriations Bill already passed by the House. That amendment would authorize the CAP. (That could not be done under the rules of the House, which made legislation on an appropriation bill subject to being stricken on a point of order.)

If the Appropriation Bill on Public Works, which had passed the House, were to be amended in the Senate, the next consideration was to ensure that in the conference between the two bodies, the House conferees would accept the Senate amendment. Then we had to get the House Rules Committee to provide a legislative base which would prevent the Senate’s CAP amendment from being stricken in the House from the conference report on a point of order. With the backing the Udalls could provide on the Democratic side, and the clout Sam Steiger and I had with Republicans, we were reasonably certain to win any vote which might occur on the House floor.

If, that is, we could get it to a vote.

To ensure that House conferees would accept the Senate’s CAP amendment, we needed to recruit Representative Mike Kirwan of Ohio, the chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Public Works. Mike was a former railroad conductor and a pretty tough old bird. He was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and a real partisan. Even so, I got along well with him as his ranking Republican member. But I needed Democratic help, so I asked Senator Hayden to go with me to see Mike. I called Gene Wilhelm, the chief clerk of the House Public Works Subcommittee, and I asked him to be in Chairman Kirwan’s office at the appointed time to witness the conversation.

I met Senator Hayden and his administrative assistant, Roy Elson, in the Rayburn House Office Building garage. (Senator Hayden, as president pro tem of the Senate, rode over in his limousine.) We briefed the senator again concerning our purpose, which was to get Mike Kirwan to agree to accept the Senate’s CAP amendment in conference.

Both Mike and Senator Hayden were past 80 and quite deaf. They had had many Appropriations Committee experiences together through the years and were good friends. At an appropriate time, I explained our problem, and the solution we desired, to Chairman Kirwan. He listened attentively, then said “Carl, if this is what you and John want, I’ll be with you.”

First goal accomplished.

Second, we had to get Speaker John McCormack to agree to send the Public Works conference report to the House Rules Committee and demand that it be sent to the House floor with a rule waiving any point of order against the Senate amendment. Stewart Udall explained our purpose to the Speaker and he agreed immediately. (We found the Speaker didn’t like Wayne Aspinall!)

Senator Hayden kept the bill in committee long enough for word of the presence of the CAP amendment to get to Mr. Aspinall in Colorado. When it was finally voted out, I’m told, Wayne made many calls to Washington and found he was completely boxed in. The CAP was going to be authorized in the appropriations bill, and he had not only failed to block it, but had gotten nothing for Colorado. He came roaring back to Washington and immediately scheduled mark-up hearings for the CAP bill in the Interior Committee, to be followed immediately by the consideration of any amendments, and finally a vote to send the bill to the floor of the House.

I wasn’t a party to the negotiations which led to giving Colorado its pound of flesh: authorization of nine reclamation projects in Wayne Aspinall’s district. Few, if any, of them had a benefit-to-cost ratio which would have made them attractive. Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico demanded a dam on the Gila River, which also was added to the CAP bill. More pork. Then Chairman Aspinall insisted on a provision that the Colorado projects and the CAP would proceed to construction simultaneously.

Arizona agreed to all the various proposals. Why? Because the Appropriations Committee was where Arizona had its strength. We knew we could get appropriations for the CAP without pushing the Colorado projects. They were so marginal economically that for years there was never any money budgeted for then.

As a result, despite all the bludgeoning of Wayne Aspinall and other Colorado members, the Central Arizona Project was essentially completed before any of these Colorado projects were started.

Jubilant as I was over our success in gaining authorization of the CAP, I fully realized that the battle was far from won. Authorization is one thing; finding is quite another.

When a reclamation project is authorized, it merely means that Congress has given its protagonists a hunting license. The funds for the construction of the project must be appropriated each year. Quite often, the president’s budget will not include funds for such a project for several years after authorization. We were determined that the Central Arizona Project would not be delayed in this manner.

So, being ranking Republican member on the Public Works Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, I was able to put money ($1 million) into the appropriations bill (over the budget) for beginning phases of the Central Arizona Project. I did this for two years in a row, hoping there would be money in the budget for the project.

Rather than put money in over the budget the third year, I asked my good friend and colleague, Senator Paul Fannin, to go with me to the Office of Management and Budget to talk to Roy Ash, its director. We did that, and impressed Mr. Ash that we needed to have a schedule of appropriations which would be budgeted each year until the completion of the Central Arizona Project. Mr. Ash said he understood our problem, and would work on it.

About six weeks later, he called me and asked if Senator Fannin and I could meet with him in his office. We were only too glad to do so. We were overjoyed, of course, when Mr. Ash presented us with a schedule of annual prospective budget appropriations which would carry the CAP to completion.

This schedule was followed faithfully, although it had to be increased from time to time because of ballooning costs, due mainly to inflation.

And so the Central Arizona Project became a reality after decades of blood, sweat and tears. Many dedicated and hard working Arizonans had a part in achieving its authorization, funding and construction. Democrats and Republicans labored shoulder to shoulder in winning the battle.

Today water from the Colorado River flows down the CAP Canal to central Arizona and Tucson, promising a brighter future for our state. The water is more expensive than we had hoped, and therefore it is used more by municipalities and industry than by agriculture. But it is there, more valuable than gold in a thirsty land such as ours.

I will always be proud that I played a role in bringing the Central Arizona Project to reality.