CONSTRUCTION: Dam Week

One of the easiest ways to start an argument in the U.S. is to propose damming a river. Last week the fights over two big dam projects which have been through long controversies were settled.

¶Governors. Senators and Representatives of four Western states voted to drop the controversial Echo Park Dam from their plan to develop power resources on the upper Colorado River. Conservationists had opposed the plan, angrily pointing out that the Echo Park Dam would flood the Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado's northwest corner. The four-state group now plans to push four other dams in a bill to be introduced in Congress next session.

¶FPC flashed the green light for construction of the Priest Rapids and Wanapum Dams on the Columbia River. They will be built by the Grant County (Wash.) Public Utility District, which had to fight objections of the state power commission before it could take on the job. The P.U.D. will share the $361 million cost of the Priest River Dam with the Federal Government, making the dam the first under President Eisenhower's public-private "partnership" policy.