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Show DIXIE PROJECT, UTAH 103 Mr. DOMINY. I expect you would have to do it by retiring some of the irrigation and this might be desirable if industry was a greater contributor to the total economy of the area. For example, in your own State of Texas there has been some retirement of irrigated land around the city of El Paso because municipal and industrial water is of greater importance and there was no other way to get it; so, the city has actually retired agricultural land in order to acquire water rights. Mr. ROGERS. DO we have here the breakdown of the different eosts, the cost of the Virgin City Reservoir, the Gunlock Reservoir and the distribution system % Mr. DOMINY. Yes. We can give you that. Mr. ROGERS. Mr. McFarland says we have it. I wanted to be sure. Mr. Chenoweth. Mr. CHENOWETH. Mr. Commissioner, we are always happy to have you before this committee. You have presented a very persuasive and convincing statement. ( Discussion off the record.) Mr. CHENOWETH. I get the impression you would prefer to put this project in the regional development plan. Mr. DOMINY. This is the Department's recommendation. It has always been that we need a Pacific Southwest water project, patterned after the upper Colorado storage project. On the other hand, all of our reports and all of my testimony and the testimony of the Secretary fully endorse the Dixie project as a fully supportable project, standing on its own feet. We urge, however, that if the Congress acts now provision be made in the authorizing act that it could be added to the basin project if a basin project ultimately passes. I, for one, would certainly hope that we would have the authority to include this project into a basin account so that if we run into problems with the rates as high as these for agricultural payments that some additional power revenue assistance might some day be available to this project. Mr. CHENOWETH. YOU mentioned in your statement that " Had the Dixie project been located in any basin of the West where a basin account or other means of financial assistance to irrigation from basin powerplants has been available as a matter of policy, I am confident that it would have been authorized and constructed long ago." What do you mean by that statement ? Mr. DOMINT. I mean we would have had power revenue assistance and we could have put the rates cheaper than we have here and gotten support for the project much quicker. Mr. CHENOWETH. DO you want to leave the impression with the committee that without that assistance then the project is not feasible? Mr. DOMINY. No, sir. I want to emphasize that the power rate here of 7.15 mills, and the irrigation repayment rates are extremely high. They are in the maximum range of feasibility. In other words, the fact that the State picked up $ 2 million, which was in the project cost, demonstrates that we had had trouble finding a way to repay. Mr. CHENOWETH. The State paid for the highway relocation. Mr. DOMINY. Highway relocation. It has taken all of these things to get this project to where it would meet the repayment tests of |
