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Show RECLAMATION OF THE ARID LANDS to Hoover Dam in height and perhaps third in generation of power, three other high dams in New Mexico and Utah, and 10 other projects including dams, power plants and transmission lines that would make possible the irrigation of considerable land. It gave priority for investigation to some 23 other projects. The cost of producing power was to be repaid to the Federal Treasury through revenue from the sale of energy and the excess revenue was to be allocated to the four Upper Basin States according to a percentage basis defined in the measure. Construction costs other than for power and municipal water were to be repaid from water charges spread over 50 years. The sum of $760 million was authorized for the Upper Colorado Basin project.10" As Congress pushed ahead in opening up new projects it was sharpening political and economic issues. Advocates of reclamation development had long since learned that the generation and sale of electric power could be made to carry much of the cost of projects which were not otherwise feasible or justified. In their search for promising hydro-electric sites they came into conflict with private interests and in one major instance were denied the site in favor of a private competitor. Equally divisive and less easy of compromise was the problem of the excess-lands provision in the reclamation law. It has been seen that the Bureau of Reclamation gave little attention in its publications to efforts it may have made to enforce the provision. This is somewhat difficult to understand in view of the emphasis the Bureau continued to place on the number of new farms that were being opened to settlement. In any case, in hearings before the subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Public Lands in 1947, on a bill exempting certain projects from the land-limitation provisions of the Federal reclamation laws, Senator Arthur V. Watkins of Utah brought out that every user of Federal water in his state had to conform to the excess-land law by signing a contract, before he received water, to provide for the disposal of his excess lands, either by his own action or by the government. In the Orland District of the Sacramento Valley in California, one of the first projects to be undertaken, there had been complete compliance with the acreage limitation provision. Well before a number of projects were ready for water, the Bureau of Reclamation could report that in the Owyhee area 12,500 acres held by two land companies had been sold at the appraised price of slightly less than S10 an acre. When state lands had been sold for $25 an acre, one half of the surplus over the appraised value had been paid on construction charges as the Omnibus Adjustment Act of 1926 required. In the Deschutes project in Oregon 98 percent of the excess lands were included in recordable contracts providing that they must be sold within 10 years at the appraised price, on the Minidoka project from 94 to 100 percent of the excess land was in similar contracts and on the largest of them all, the Grand Coulee project, 4,659 recordable contracts covering 988,950 acres had been signed. This was 79 percent of the acreage and 67 percent of the owners.170 On 169 70 Stat. 105-111. 170 "Exemption of Certain Projects from Land-Limitation Provisions of Federal Reclamation Laws," Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Commission of Public Lands, United States Senate, 1947, pp. 213-17. The data given by Assistant Commissioner of Reclamation William A. Warne is not complete, for attention at the hearing was diverted to other questions. Warne did say that some undeveloped excess land in the Central Valley project of California would receive water. He also offered evidence showing that tenancy in the Boise project in Idaho was not being used to get around the excess-lands provision. |