Bridge and Marble Canyon Dams

Document: Bridge and Marble Canyon Dams, Anthony Wayne Smith, August 30, 1965 (mimograph), page 5-5- entirely from Marble Canyon. Bridge Canyon has been represented as being entirely a peaking power project, and this has nothing whatsoever to do with any Government reclamation project; it has been represented as a money-earner for the construction of reclamation projects elsewhere; but such money can just as well be provided out of the general treasury, and Bridge Canyon is not necessary to such financing. If it be true, as now suggested, that Bridge Canyon may be used to provide a small measure of pumping power, it is not necessary that it should be so used. There is no way in which the language of the Grand Canyon Park Act can be tortured into consistency with the provisions of the measure under consideration. Needless to say Congress is privileged, if it wishes to modify basic national policy in regard to park protection, to do so; but in that event, it would be preferable, in all candor, to state frankly that such a course had been chosen. A declaration of consistency where no consistency exists would, in our judgment, be unbecoming to the Congress of the United states. I need hardly say to this Subcommittee, which is already well informed about these projects, that neither Bridge Canyon nor Marble Canyon dam will store any water whatsoever for irrigation purposes; in fact, both of them will cause severe losses of the irreplaceable water resources of the Pacific Southwest through evaporation. Nor will Bridge Canyon be used in any significant measure for pumping water into central Arizona or elsewhere. In the original proposal for the Central Arizona Project and the Pacific Southwest Water Plan, advanced by the Department of the Interior, Bridge Canyon would not have been used at all for pumping; its functions would have been to supply peaking power, mainly for sale in California; it wouldEpson Perfection 4870 Photo, 400 dpi, 24 bit, 1,407,358 byte