By a Dam Site

A big man called out the National Guard last week to stop a manmade flood. The big man was redheaded, 300-lb. Leon Phillips, Governor of Oklahoma. The flood he was determined to stop would have been caused by the scheduled closing of the gates of gigantic, almost completed Grand River Dam, would have submerged 52,000 acres of northeast Oklahoma. Said Red Phillips, clamping down on his cigar and clamping down martial law on Grand River Dam: "I am moving the troops in before they get that dam in such shape that it will take dynamite to let the water out."

A $20,000,000 Public Works Administration project, later put under the State-created Grand River Dam Authority, the dam was designed to harness the power of Grand River, generate cheap electricity for Oklahoma. Red Phillips was against it from the start. Oklahoma did not want it, said Oklahoma's aggressive Governor. According to Governor Phillips, the dam would destroy $889,275 worth of the State's highways. To his way of thinking, a $350,000 bridge built by PWA did not compensate the State for the loss; PWA owed Oklahoma another $500,000. And he vowed he would never let the dam be finished until that account was settled.

Asserting that the Governor was simply a friend of Oklahoma utilities, Oklahoma's Senator Josh Lee, friend of the dam, declared on the floor of the U. S. Senate: "Who gains by wrecking [this dam] ? . . . The utilities gain. . . . This is only a smoke screen intended to hide the real issue, which is whether or not the people shall have cheap electricity." Said engineers, if the dam is not closed and water is allowed to rush through the gates it will cause thousands of dollars of damage, wash out Oklahoma's immediate prospects of cheap electricity. Only hope of the Dam Authority was that the Governor would take his case to court; there was no way of settling with the Oklahoma National Guard.

Having moved his troops in, Governor Phillips did go to court, got a temporary injunction against the dam's completion. If the court makes his injunction permanent, said he, he will withdraw his soldiers. If not, he "will keep the troops on hand until the PWA puts the money on the line."

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