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Show 122 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER Bureau's inventory with an ultimate construction cost of over $5 billion. 7 - The bill makes drastic changes in existing federal water policy. - Example: Existing law requires repay- ment of the irrigation investment to be completed in equal annual payments within fifty years (forty years after a ten- year development period). This bill would postpone the commencement of repayment of about ninety percent of the irrigation investment (without interest) for nearly fifty years. 8 - The bill undercuts the Hoover Commission. - The Congress created the Hoover Commission for the purpose, among others, of investigating and making recommenda- tions as to all water and power policies. This commission is actively at work, holding hearings throughout the coun- try. A preliminary report should be available within a few months. No legislation should be adopted by the Congress, establishing new policies as sweeping as these, at least until it has received and considered the report of the commis- sion it created. 9 - The lands included in the proposed eleven parti- cipating irrigation projects are of limited producing capacity. - The Bureau of Reclamation report shows that only twenty percent of the lands are listed as class-1. Due to their high elevation, all have a short growing season and are limited in the types of crops that can be grown; on some of the projects there is frost every month of the year. Why ask the nation's taxpayers to make a gift of $2,500 per acre for such projects? 10 - The bill would delegate excessive authority to the Secretary of the Interior to determine feasibility and con- struct irrigation projects. Such delegation of the responsi- bility of Congress is poor legislation. 11 - The bill would, in effect, approve the use of the so-called benefit-cost ratio for testing the economic justi- fication of irrigation projects despite the fact that it is simply a device used in attempting to justify projects which are both economically and financially infeasible. |