Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 27, 1990 TAG: 9004270863
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/9 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE:
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Short
An Interior Department spokesman, however, says the administration will cooperate with Rep. George Miller's subcommittee probe of the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River.
"The Department of Interior, by imposing a gag order on National Park and U.S. Fish and Wildlife employees, has demonstrated again its unwillingness to engage in a full public discussion about the impact of its operations on the Grand Canyon," Miller said Thursday after witnesses from those agencies failed to appear before his subcommittee on water, power and offshore energy resources.
Miller says the Interior Department is moving too slowly on an environmental impact statement on the effects of the dam. He has introduced a bill that would force the department to change operations at the dam until the study is complete.
The witnesses who testified at a hearing Thursday presented a scenario that pits preservation of one of the world's natural wonders against the need for electrical power in the southwestern United States.
The daily fluctuations in the river flow caused by the dam have greatly changed the ecosystem of the river bed and the Grand Canyon, said Linn Montgomery, biologist from Northern Arizona University.
- Associated Press
by CNB