Letter Concerning Marble and Bridge Canyon Dams

Letter: To Mr Svendsen, Draft, 1965 (carbon copy), page 22 Pacific Southwest Water Plan is now known. As I point out in my letter to the President, a copy of which is enclosed, we recognize that there will be a peripheral invasion of Grand Canyon National Park by a 13-mile backup of Bridge Canyon reservoir along the Park's downstream border. If there were any way this could be avoided, I certainly would have urged such a course, even though there is a specific reservation for future Reclamation development in the Act of 1919 by which Congress created the park. That Act authorized the Secretary of the Interior "to permit the utilization of areas therein which may be necessary for the development and maintenance of a Government reclamation project...." Despite this authority, however, I am simply making a recommendation to the President and to the Congress. The latter, of course, will be the final arbiter after all the facts are in. What disturbs me is that some of the "bitter end preservationists", if I can use that term, are seeking to prejudge the case and to influence public and Congressional opinion before hearings have even been scheduled. TheEpson Perfection 4870 Photo, 400 dpi, 8 bit, 2,819,611 byte