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Echo Park Dam was proposed in the 1950s by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation as a central feature of the Colorado River Storage Project. Situated on the Green River, a major tributary of the Colorado River, the dam was proposed for the Echo Park district of Dinosaur National Monument, flooding much of the Green and Yampa river valleys in the monument. The dam was bitterly opposed by conservationists, who saw the encroachment of a dam into an existing national park as another Hetch Hetchy, to be opposed as an appropriation of protected lands for development purposes. A compromise led to the abandonment of the Echo Park project in favor of Glen Canyon Dam on the main stem of the Colorado in lands that were not, at that time, protected. ==Project history== The project was first proposed in 1941. Dinosaur National Monument was, at the time of its designation in 1915, a small park unit focused on the dinosaur fossil beds discovered along the Green River in 1909. The monument was expanded in 1938 to , encompassing the canyon networks of the Green and Yampa upstream from the dinosaur quarry. The newly added areas were little known to the public and to the Park Service, and the Park Service initially did not oppose the dam plans, having allied itself with the Bureau of Reclamation to develop Boulder Dam National Recreation Area (later Lake Mead National Recreation Area and other reservoirs as public recreation facilities. The Park Service finally came out against the proposal in 1950, with director Newton B. Drury in opposition to the position of Secretary of the Interior Oscar L. Chapman, whose department controlled both the Park Service and the Bureau of Reclamation. Drury stated in the 1950 Park Service annual report that reservoir projects would "destroy or impair the beauty and interest" of the national parks. Drury, a Republican in a Democratic administration, resigned in 1951, leading to criticism of Chapman for forcing Drury out. Drury was followed for eight months by Arthur Demaray, then by Conrad Wirth. Wirth took a less confrontational approach, partly under orders from Chapman to make the disagreement less public. Wirth was an advocate of public recreation lands associated with Reclamation projects, and suggested that Echo Park could become a National Recreation Area once flooded with a reservoir.〔 The first widely published public reaction to the Echo Park Dam proposal was a July 22, 1950 article by Bernard DeVoto in the ''Saturday Evening Post'', entitled ''Shall We Let Them Ruin Our National Parks?'' Implicitly comparing the flooding of Echo Park to the Hetch Hetchy intrusion in Yosemite, the article was picked up by ''Readers Digest'' and saw wide circulation. The Colorado River Storage Project was proposed by the Bureau of Reclamation in the early 1950s as an integrated plan for collecting and using the waters of the upper Colorado River. Politically, the project had the backing of the upper Colorado states: Colorado, Wyoming and Utah, as well as Arizona, who had all fought with California over water allocations from the Colorado, of which California consumed a disproportionate share. Construction of storage reservoirs high on the river system would allow the upstream states more control over the water and its use. In 1955, new Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay withdrew the Interior Department's support for the Echo Park Dam.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Chapter 5 )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Echo Park Dam」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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