Wilderness Society 
                         1840 Mintwood Place, Washington, D. C. 
 
 
 
         WILDERNESS NEWS 
 
                           For Use of Members of the Society 
 
   Robert Sterling Yard                                               June
21, 
      Eitor                       NUMB ER5                              1937

 
 
           ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK-TUNNEL BILL 
 
                         TITLED AND NUMBERED 
 
 
     Two days after Wilderness News Number 4 announced that an alternate
route was 
possible for the tunnel project which had been planned to pass destructively
through 
the heart of Rocky Mountain National Park, Senator Alvah H. Adams of Colorado
dis- 
solved the mystery in which its promoters had heretofore concealed it. 
 
     The plan to hitch it again on the Interior Appropriation bill as a rider
(where 
it was defeated last year) was dropped. Mr. Adams introduced it in the Senate
late 
on Friday, June 18, as an ordinary bill. 
 
     Its number is S. 2681. 
 
     Its title is "Grand Lake - Big Thompson Transmountain Water Diversion
Project." 
 
     Its purpose is "to authorize construction" of the tunnel "as
a Federal Reola- 
mation Project". 
 
     Its results, or three of them, will be (1) unalterably to deface one
of the grandest 
primeval wildernesses among this nation's incomparable National Parks, (2)
to kill for- 
ever Rocky Mountain National Park ' s own pure primitive quality, and (3)
utterly to destroy 
the Congressional precedent upon which the entire primeval system depends.

 
     Now we know it is not necessary for this tunnel to be driven at such
frightful cost 
to the nation through Rocky Mountain National Park. It can pass its irrigation

water around the Southern boundary of the National Park, outside of it, leaving

the park uninjured and the System unendangered. It will just as efficiently
carry 
water that way from the Columbia River west of the Continental Divide, under
the 
divide, to the sugar beet fields of the South Platte Valley of Colorado on
the East. 
 
     But the bill's promoters positively reject this alternative, probably
because 
it will cost them two miles of tunnel more that way. In other words they
value the 
American Primeval National Parks System at two miles of tunnel! 
 
     This destructive bill can be defeated only by appeal of citizens to
Congressmen. 
 
     We suggest that those who want to help the thinking people of the country
to defeat 
this bill should write their protests at once to their own Senators and Congressmen;

next, to Senator John H. Bankhead, and Representative Compton I. White, Chairmen,

respectively, of the Senate and House Committees on Irrigation and Reclamation.

 
 
Then, to the President of the United States!