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From Hearings Before the Subcommitte of the Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation, House of Representatives, Seventy-Eighth Congress, First Session, 28 August 1943.

Mrs. Nell K. Irion: Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee of the Irrigation and Reclamation Committee of the National House of Representatives:

The women of Bonner County, Idaho, are of the opinion that there should be no dam erected at Albeni Falls, on the Pend Oreille River, in the State of Idaho. They have not changed 111 that opinion since the so-called compromise, which was recently entered into between Dr. Paul I. Raver, Bonneville and Grand Coulee Administrator, and Gov. C. A. Bottolfsen, of the State of Idaho, and which has been endorsed by the chamber of commerce of Sandpoint, Idaho.

According to this compromise, the waters in Lake Pend Oreille would be raised no higher than 2,062.5 feet above average low-water level, and there would be three dams built instead of one, as originally contemplated at Albeni Falls. The development would include provisions for the irrigation of Rathdrum prairie, a wheat-growing district of some 40,000 to 80,000 acres, virtually at the doorstep of the city of Spokane, Wash., just across the Idaho line. One dam would be in the headwaters 6f the Flathead River, in Hungry Horse on the south fork of the Flathead River, above Flathead Lake, in Montana; one at' Cabinet Gorge on the Montana-Idaho State line, and one at Albeni Falls, on the Pend Oreille River, in Idaho.

By this compromise the State of Idaho would forever relinquish its water rights in this section of our State to the Federal Government; it would forever surrender control of its power and water resources and it would forever exclude or discourage private capital and industry from operating in this region. This is a sweeping and far-reaching action on the part of the State of Idaho. It would hobble progress in this part of the State and set up a bureaucratic oligarchy in its stead. A fundamental principle is at stake. Today we find this socialistic tendency creeping into other lines of industry in our country. It is creeping into the mining industry and other industries. Are we willing to have Federal control of all our resources and industries in a socialistic form of government or are we still a democracy? This so-called compromise should receive careful study and not be hastily endorsed by any group. It has been said that we should not stick our heads in the sand like ostriches. Neither should we trade away our birthright for a mess of pottage.

Inasmuch as competent engineers have advised that lowering the level of Lake Pend Oreille from an elevation of 2,069 feet, as originally proposed by Army engineers, to 2,062.5 feet (a difference of only a few feet) would not materially affect the matter one way or the other relative to damages which might be sustained or incurred, I am hereby submitting for your consideration and for your record a resolution which was adopted by a mass meeting of the women of Bonner County, Idaho, on June 16, 1943, at Sandpoint, Idaho, and which action has not been rescinded.

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