In June 1975, Congress finally diverted the Bureau of Reclamation's Garrison Diversion Unit, a massive irrigation project with potentially catastrophic environmental and diplomatic impacts. The House voted 377 to 28 to approve an appropriations bill for public water and power development that included an amendment calling for a temporary halt to the Garrison project, now 18 percent complete, and allocating one million dollars to study present plans and alternatives "in order to provide the basis for a sound environmental decision on whether or not to proceed with the project."¹ In part, the vote reflected urgent congressional concern which followed revelation of Reclamation Commissioner Gilbert Stamm's sub rosa suggestions that studies of potential alternatives be withheld from State Department officials who have been conducting GDU negotiations with Canada. Though the decision followed formal objection to the plan by Canadian officials, who predicted pollution in violation of the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909,² the amendment is concerned with more than international legal issues. Publication of previously secret Interior Department memos also revealed that Reclamation had not actually run the economic-environmental analyses that supposedly proved all alternatives to the Garrison Diversion Unit to be "infeasible," as reported in the environmental impact statement (EIS). The proposed study will entail a thorough evaluation of the Unit's environmental impact on North Dakota and neighboring states, as well as on Canada, and a concrete economic analysis of costs and benefits. Because funds are not to be cut off until the end of the current fiscal year, which runs until September 30, 1976, the vote provides only a limited victory for environmentalists; 13.6 million dollars remain to be used for 1976 construction.