BASIN BACKERS SEEK AGREEMENT
  Efforts to eliminate any possible
conflict of northwest interests in the
coming congress over proposed developments on the upper and lower Columbia river will be made at a
meeting of Spokane and Portland
business men here Thursday.
  In his engineering survey of the
Columbia river. Major Butler of the
army engineer corps is said by Portland business men to have found it
practical to build a huge 3,000,000-horse
power plant in the lower Columbia near Cascade. Mr. Butler's report is also understood to have declared the Columbia basin project
feasible through the Grand coulee
power-pumping plan.
  For many years Portland has
worked for development of the Umatilla Rapids project, which is said to
be dividing Portland interests. Portland men are expected to decide officially between the Cascade and
Umatilla projects before coming here.
  Columbia Basin Irrigation league
officials have been informed that
Portland expects to ask congress to
authorize and appropriate money for
construction of their project in the
coming session of congress.
  To Ask Small  Sum for Basin.
  Several months ago the basin backers definitely announced they would
ask congress for authorization and
possibly a small appropriation
Columbia basin.
  The Cascade and Columbia basin
projects are the two largest project
to be before congress now. Both are
in the northwest, and ably represented in congress by Senator Wesley L.
Jones and Senator Charles McNar,
of Oregon.
  Friends of Columbia basin feel this
project should have right of way because it is essentially a reclamation
project of about 1,800,000 acres of
arid land, as compared with about
140,000 acres in the Cascade project.
  The Columbia river survey board
has held that reclamation has prior
rights on the waters of the Columbia
river, with power and navigation
ranking second and third.