The fun of working over this old history stuff (and yes! it does matter) is it is like beachcombing, walking back and forth, picking up and turning over what looks like nothing much, and finding: Oh! wow, what about this?
My main charge against Byron Pearson’s history (2 books, 1 cranky anti-environmentalist hypothesis) is that even with the additional 20 years between his first and the re-tread, he still never did the major research he needed to do: No Colorado archives, none from California, none from Washington, and so on. Does that matter? Try this:
A key moment in the summer of 1966 came when the full House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs (chair: Wayne Aspinall of Colorado) was working over the bill, getting ready to approve it so it could go to the House floor. Aspinall, worried (just as Secretary Udall was and Pearson reports) about the blockade that could be put up by Senator Henry Jackson of Washington state, chair of the parallel Senate committee, on any bill that in any way threatened to take or even study taking water from the Columbia down to the Los Angeles et al.
I wish I had the literary power of a forceful playwright to set you the scene: the full committee, meeting in private, and after months of hard legislative toil, arguing and fussing and joking, and then of a sudden Chairman Aspinall, a man oh-so-careful of his prerogatives as chair and a wily, long-experienced legislator who got his bills through by balanced calculation of interests, presented, with his key ally (Rep. Rogers of Texas — another person not researched by B.P.) an amendment —and note, this was almost at the last moment; tension was high — to soften, just a bit, but a definite sign of what concerned him, the provision to study importing water from the Columbia.
Caught by surprise, but wanting to yield to the Chair’s acumen and power, the Committee approved.
California did not, exploded (in private). Meetings were held (no research, no interviews here, either). The Californians grabbed hold of Arizona’s Morris Udall, supposedly Aspinall’s lieutenant on this bill, and bent him over backward and roundabout. High drama in secret, and when the committee met again, wham! the Californians, Udall in tow, reversed Aspinall and re-installed the stronger water import study provisions. Humiliated by having his committee stolen, Aspinall washed his hands, saying in effect, go take your chances, California-Arizona.
The situation was then this: Aspinall had to take the bill to the Rules Committee to get a green light for floor consideration. A Californian was key on that committee. That done, the battle would go to the floor, where the big numbers of the California delegation would be essential to get the bill done. So, surely, having twisted the bill out of Aspinall’s protective expertise, California was ready to go all out, right?
Important to see here that California was wedded to certain key demands: a guarantee on their water share, for instance, and of great importance, the study to get the Columbia’s waters, and just as central, the Grand Canyon dams with their sure-fire cash production in the decades ahead to pay for importing water from northwest to southwest.
Since the committee had voted to keep the dams in the bill (Aspinall wasn’t going to compromise on that. Yet — and where is the research on that decision?) and been bent by California to keep the stiffest anti-Jackson study provision, that must have meant California was ready to go full throttle, get the House approval, and launch it at the Senate.
Nope. In spite of assurances by vote-counter Udall that the bill was safe, California’s water gurus were afraid that on the House floor, they would lose one of their essential provisions. And which one was that? Not water import; they had already gone all out to twist Aspinall’s tail to make the bill as big a face-slapper to Jackson as they could; they weren’t afraid of him.
What scared them, and what caused them to block the bill from even getting anywhere near the House floor was, yes, the Grand Canyons dams that the Sierra Club and, ahem, the nation, were making such a fuss about. Now, surely, a conscientious researcher would have spent the hours and days in the archives and in interviewing to get the Coloradans and Californians story straight. Surely. However, Pearson did not do this crucial work: — not in the late 1990’s, early 2000’s, or in the next 20 years before his second try came out.
So he is left flailing about what California thought and why it did what it did. But I say this: California considered the anti-Jackson provision less of a problem than getting a House majority for the Grand Canyon dams. And friends, like it or not, that result had nothing to do with the undoubted power of Jackson. No, California killed the Colorado Basin bill in late summer 1966 because they were afraid the Sierra Club’s campaign against the dams was effective enough to lead to the House stripping them from the bill, or adding some other provision that would weaken their power to fund water import, studies and all.
So who saved the Grand Canyon by responding to the public outcry for it? Interior Secretary Udall? Senator Henry Jackson? Nah — it was California’s intransigence. And that story is probably verified somewhere in those unresearched California archives.
Part 2.
I am not quite done. I really do want Secretary Udall to get credit for his one big maneuver. Even though he had been beating the drum for the bill with the dams all summer 1966 long, once it was clear there would be no House action, he used the power he had as Secretary, not to re-vamp one more time that effort to satisfy both California and Jackson and find a tricky way to study water import; no, he used the power he had (reportedly when Reclamation chief Dominy was out of the country) over his agency, the Bureau of Reclamation, to order it to study the question of electric power and the Central Arizona Project every which way from Sunday to the ninth inning, and find a method THAT DID NOT REQUIRE EITHER OF THE GRAND CANYON DAMS.
Did Jackson inveigle him into doing that? Maybe, or maybe not. Maybe he even said: Mr. Secretary, you get rid of the dams; don’t put that on me. We don’t know because Pearson never went into the archives and potential interviewees from the Northwest. And why did Udall not fear California’s determination to keep the dams? Or to put it another way, how did he know the damless proposal he was having Reclamation ready for him, would find favor with the three key Senators, Hayden of Arizona, Anderson of New Mexico, and Jackson — Pearson is silent on those key meetings.
We do know Hayden’s chief aide was totally disappointed to lose the dams. We know the key Colorado & California Senators were Republicans, avid for the dams, of no account, and noisy. M. Udall & Aspinall in the House kept trying for a year and more to keep the dams in. The Secretary’s fellow Arizonans longed for that dam. His powerful Reclamation chief lusted after them, even from somewhere off in Asia. His brother assured him he had the House votes for a dam. Yet what was really unignorable was the public parade being whipped up and led by the Sierra Club and its prickly ads.
Yes, Jackson knew the dams were “a pistol aimed at the Columbia”. He was a smart man. And we, the Sierra Club and the nation, had helped him by repeating that mantra for months. And that repetition, loud and nationally clear, had scared the Californians, convinced the three key Senators, and now switched Secretary Udall to be the hero who came up with (still another) plan for the Colorado River — a plan that said “NO” to the Grand Canyon dams.
And, Yes!, the Columbia doesn’t flow down into Lake Mead and Los Angeles. And, Yes!, the Colorado does flow undammed through the Grand Canyon, to the eternal pleasure of environmentalists and Canyon lovers everywhere. And, Yes!, you can hear, down there along the river, walls towering a mile above, the Canyon and its River, gurgling and roaring in their unfettered pleasure at being free.
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