PL93-620 W2. Sep-Oct 1974: Troubles, Uncertainties, Waiting

[ General comment: A lot of what follows is just so much hot air; people gassing to pass the time until a definitive step was taken. Like much of DC chat; it needs now, and at the time, to have a lot of salt shaken on it. Entertainment? Trying to prove worth? So after I clear this away, I will take up the content of the Committee Report in a separate entry. I will then go on to summarize the hunter/AG&F effort. Then finally, we get to the floor debate of 10 Oct.]

If the government was trying to prove it could not help the Havasupai, then information I picked up supported that notion: grazing was limited by the cost of pumping water. They could only sell their cattle cheap. There was no forthcoming appropriation for an electric line. Work on improving Hilltop wasnt done because there was no initiative. The attitude toward helicopters and any tramway was adamantly negative. 

The Club's McCloskey reported to Evans that he had talked with Congressman Taylor, who suggested Udall was getting cold feet, and would not fight very hard if we pushed further amendments, maybe even being willing to shrink the transfer boundary. Hunt's office visits in DC were finding less & less sympathy in the Senate. Pontius was meanwhile trying to be soothing about the land use plan and the report.

PL93-620 W. Aug-Sep 1974: A Re-focussed Battle; Attacking the Precedent

Udall had demonstrated his leadership that had led to a bill, complete with some compromises, that could command a majority in the committee against the opposition of the forces determined that federal land should not be transferred to the Havasupai (or any tribe, by implication). There had been an even larger majority for the other changes he had made in the Senate-passed version.

The next necessary accomplishment, not in any way automatic, would be to bring this bill to the floor of the full House of Representatives, maintaining the bill's content while building another majority for it. There were technical steps: The Committee had lacked a quorum on the 31st, and so had to reconvene for the vote. The Committee Report & minority views had to be written, and the package presented to the Rules Committee, the body that determined what procedures were to be followed during floor debate & voting. The day for floor action could then be scheduled -- in this bill's history, no mean feat given how often it had been delayed and postponed.  These preliminary steps to full House action took up August, September, and half of October.

PL93-620 U2f Jul-Aug 1974: Outside My Grand Canyon Bubble

It is amazing, and I had completely forgotten the simultaneity of events,  that anything was accomplished that July and early August, 1974, since it was the time when the House Judiciary Committee debated (on tv) and voted articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon. 

I certainly remember watching the late July proceedings of that committee, yet these incredible events had no echo or seeming influence on my journals concerning the House Interior Committee and its consideration of the Grand Canyon bill. The Nixon demise is almost a separate set of memories; for me set in and with the family of Brock Evans, in whose house I stayed during that period. I do remember vividly the commuting exercise necessary to get from that house to the capitol district.

Nor was this the only "distraction" that I failed to record, for I spent a fair amount of time in the National Archives on Pennsylvania Ave--my first Researcher card is dated Oct 1973-- reading through and typing up notes on all the government papers I could find relevant to the  (particularly XIXth-century) human history of the Canyon -- maps, Forest Service, Park Service, Geological Survey,  Bureau of Indian Affairs, et al., the foundation of what I ambitiously hoped might someday become the Canyon's comprehensive political history. 

PL93-620 U2e map JUL 1974 The Map at the Top of the Hill

 Here is the official map of the Committee's deliberation. 

Since parts are hard to read, I will list important map text going clockwise from the upper right corner:

"Navajo Bridge": The Park boundary is at the mouth of the Paria River, though the text refers to the bridge a few miles downstream.

   [One way to think about some of these notations is that they were more relevant in an earlier part of the legislative history.]

"MARBLE CANYON EAST   Proposed Boundary on Canyon Rim   Note: Subject to Concurrence of the Navajo Nation" : Goldwater & NPS wanted a rim boundary, but the Navajo would not agree (and still do not), so this notation wistfully suggests it is "proposed", a dream. One might ask then, if the rim is "proposed", where is the "real" eastern boundary?

"COCONINO PLATEAU": Just above the text are the 3 partial sections moved from the Forest to the Park.

The two existing parts of the Havasupai Reservation were labelled. Cross-hatching shows the Use Area; diagonals the Reservation addition.

"BOUNDARY: approx ¼ mile back from canyon rim." This refers to the Havasupai Reservation addition's northern boundary; additional information on crossing Havasu Creek was in the body of the bill.

"164.8 RIVER MILE" AND "273.1 RIVER MILE" identify the points on the Park boundary described as "Boundary on South Bank of Colorado River (River Mile 164.8 to 273.1)"

"Boundary on Canyon Rim" appears twice on the north side to show that the Park was only to include canyon, not any rim land in the Kanab, Whitmore, Parashant-Andrus additiions. 

"MARBLE CANYON WEST   Boundary on Canyon Rim": No proposed or concurrences here; the land was all federal to begin with, and the boundary was emphatically on the rim.

PL93-620 U2e Jul 1974: The Committee Does Its Work

The House Interior & Insular Affairs Committee met the morning of 31 Jul 1974 to debate and vote on HR5671/S1296. The rules allowed the action to be witnessed by an audience, and we were there in the first row, the committee ranged on its dais in an arc facing us, Democrats on our right.  In an earlier post, I listed the names, states, and parties of all 41 members. Of course, not all voted, spoke, or even attended.

PL93-620 U2d Jul 1974: On to the Interior Committee; Sweating Out The Wait

The Narrative, July     (Note: the ad depicted below was added 12 May 2012)

At the beginning of July, after his visits, McComb thought the Committee was evenly divided between "pro-Park worriers, who were not anti-Havasupai" and "Pro-Havasupai who were as much pro-Udall or Steiger or Kennedy".  He continued his function of supplying Udall & his staff with data, particularly on the acreages involved, measuring what the Park would lose right down to the last acre (I always preferred rounding off). His newsletter of 2 Jul highlighted the transfer, just mentioning the dam threat and pro-Park additions. He expected action on 10 Jul, but shortly after we heard that strip mining legislation had caused a postponement. 

Brock Evans, Club DC Representative, considered John to be pessimistic, and to muddy the waters, intended to turn up the burners the week of 17 Jul (sic my journal). He involved another of the DC's office's lobbyists, and went to see Congressman Foley, a leading opponent of any transfer. Although my notes are not conclusive, it appears that he recruited or worked with at least half a dozen allies, and made contact with the whole range of conservation groups. This determined attitude was expressed in a 3 Jul letter from the Club Executive Director to those Club members who were in the districts of Representatives on the Committee, asking them to show concern for the Havasupai, but keep currently protected lands in the Park. Interestingly, the NWF, national group of hunters, wrote to subcommittee chair Taylor against the Havasupai (precedents, again), but said nothing about the additions, which were then stirring up AWF members, as I wrote about in post U2c.

PL93-620 U2c. Jul 1974: Hunters Awake

This long narrative (over 50 posts in almost two years) is, I admit, heavily inflected by my having been a long-time advocate for an expanded, a complete, Grand Canyon National Park. So less-Park-friendly advocacies usually feel like intrusions to me; non-Park issues trying to climb aboard the Park bandwagon. In trying to make a comprehensive legislative history, I have preferred to present these other claims -- Havasupai land transfer, pro-dam action, e.g. -- in lumps of their own rather than as companion strands in a common tapestry. Another now needs to be dropped on the table -- the Arizona hunters' lobby, a group that heavily affected the legislation at its history's climax when they appeared in their natural guise as opponents of any Park expansion.

At the very beginning of 1973, when McComb & I were attempting to shape an "Arizona" bill that Goldwater could introduce as a broad compromise, we met with Arizona Game & Fish Dep't officials. Accommodating our desire for a broad Canyon designation and their desire not to lose any hunting grounds (indeed, to gain some), was a major impetus behind the concept of the zone of influence. However, our attempt got so mangled by Goldwater's office that we felt no compunction in using the 1973 Senate hearings to return to our original maximalist position. The failure of our excursion into consensus-building, and our subsequent advocacy of an optimal Park, was the subject of some misunderstanding and even grief. The hunters (organized in the Arizona Wildlife Federation, AWF) and the Arizona Game & Fish Dep't (AGF), among others, did not fully register this change.