Water Resources People and Issues
Dinosaur National Monument was created years ago because of this quarry, and
then Franklin Roosevelt extended it to take in the canyon of
Q: Green River.
A: -Green River and
River, where they joined there, two beautiful
canyons. The Reclamation Bureau was going ahead with building the dam
because they had a reservation for a reservoir dating back to 1910, or
something like that, just as they had on the Bridge Canyon site in the Grand
Canyon, and just as they had on Glacier View up on the north fork of the
River in Montana. These were all first form reclamation withdrawals.
In other words, the land was withdrawn from public use for later construction
of a reservoir. When the Dinosaur Monument was enlarged, the Bureau said
it had no objection to enlarging it, but just remember that we've got this
reclamation withdrawal and reserve the right to build a dam there whenever
we're ready.
Connie Wirth was director of the National Park Service at that time and he
recognized that he had no legal grounds to object to the building of the dam
which was provided for in the executive order enlarging the monument. The
Park Service always struggled to get money, and the promise of million to
build up facilities to display the dinosaur quarry, which was the primary focus
of interest there, Wirth thought was a good deal, so he signed off on the project
in the Truman administration. It was not done without some fight and haggling
and negotiation, and there were some other recreational facilities in the
Colorado River basin plan too. At that time, the project also included, I think,
Marble Canyon Dam and Bridge Canyon Dam, upstream and downstream from
the Grand Canyon National Park. That was all part of what they now call the
Colorado River Storage project, the idea being to provide storage to permit the
upper basin to make use of the 7.5 million acre feet that was allocated to the
upper basin in the 1924 compact.
So-but I can't remember exactly when, or how it came about-it was decided
that it wasn't right for one bureau chief to be representing the department on
this. The other thing that happened was that Bill
who had been assistant
commissioner of Reclamation, became an Assistant Secretary of the
Department of the Interior after the Hoover Commission made its
recommendations for adding more assistant secretaries. One of the things about
the Hoover Commission reports was that when they recommended that you add
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