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Show 6 DIXIE PROJECT, UTAH The Washington County Water Conservancy District has been formed as the agency empowered to contract with the United States and to assume responsibility for operation and maintenance of the project. The city of St. George has indicated its willingness to contract for the municipal and industrial water supply and for the electric energy produced by the project. The annual benefits from construction and operation of the Dixie project have been computed to total $3,992,800, including irrigation benefits of $3,259,100, power benefits of $342,000, municipal and industrial water benefits of $166,300, flood control benefits of $7,200, fish and wildlife benefits of $78,000, and recreation benefits of $140,200. A comparison of the benefits with the annual costs indicates that the benefits from construction and operation of the project exceed the costs in a ratio of 2.2 to 1. COMMITTEE AMENDMENTS Two of the committee's amendments are of sufficient importance to warrant explanation and discussion. The original bill includes a provision whereby that portion of the irrigation cost which was determined to be beyond the water users' ability to repay would be paid from revenues derived from the disposition of power marketed from Federal projects in the Lower Colorado River Basin. The committee deleted this provision and substituted language requiring repayment of the entire irrigation cost within 50 years from project revenues. The report of the Department of the Interior on the legislation and testimony received from witnesses indicates that the Dixie project is feasible and can be repaid on this basis. This was made possible by the assumption, by the State of Utah, of the costs of highway relocation and by raising power rates slightly. The other amendment is the substitution of new language in section 6 relating to the recreation and fish and wildlife development and cost-sharing policies applicable to these purposes. Since introduction of H.R. 3279, the Department proposed and the committee approved legislation to grant general authority to the Department of the Interior to provide appropriate recreation development at water resources projects and to establish reimbursement and cost-sharing standards for recreation and fish and wildlife enhancement expenditures. That legislation is embodied in H.R. 9032, which has not been enacted. The committee's substitute language in section 6 of H.R. 3279 conforms this legislation to the provisions of H.R. 9032. It should be pointed out that under the H.R. 9032 formula for establishing a ceiling on the amount that could be allocated to recreation and fish and wildlife on a nonreimbursable basis, as much as $6,285,000 of the cost of the Dixie project could be made nonreimbursable. The amount allocated to these two purposes under H.R. 3279 totals $3,302,000 and is, therefore, well below the ceiling, and it was not necessary to include the formula in section 6 of this bill. SECTION-BY-SECTION ANALYSIS Section 1 sets out the purposes and principal features of the Dixie project and provides authority to the Secretary of the Interior for its construction, operation, and maintenance. Language in section 1 |
