WSP10458

• File Number: 8210.110.60
• Description: Colorado River Water Users Association
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 12/1/1960
• Author: CRWUA
• Title: Proceedings of the 17th Annual Conference
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Annual Report

We are one organization doing a lot of worrying about who is
going to control the power, how that control will affect the ability of
the Upper Basin States to construct water projects, and the price we
are going to pay for the power.

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As you know, the Colorado River Storage Project Act (Public
Law 485) provided for the comprehensive development of the water re-
sources of the Upper Colorado River Basin" for the purposes, among
others, of...

(A) Regulating the flow of the Colorado River.

(B) Storing of water for beneficial consumptive U6e.

(C) Providing for the reclamation of arid and semi-arid land.

(B) Careful studies indicate that preference customers in the
market area are capable of providing for the earliest re-
payment of the project through; purchases of all of its power
output as soon as it is availabl~ - -and at firm prices for firm
power,

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(D) Controlling floods.

(E) Generating Hydroelectric Power.

We also know:

(A) Earliest possible power revenues are essential because of
heavy initial investment costs,i and the need for over one
billion dollars worth of assista;nce to upper basin water
projects - -with 89 per cent of the whole project to be paid
for by power revenues--BUT!

Repayment ability of the project is thus within our grasp, includ-
ing repayment of construction costs of partidpating projects, but many
vital participating projects can go down the drain if we don't get the right
kind of a transportation system for marketing storage project power.

I hope to bring home to you why this: statement is important to you.

The Bureau of Reclamation in its 50 'year record in the hydroelec-
tric field, with only two or three minor and insignificant exceptions, has
always constructed and operated the transm.ission system necessary to
carry its power output to market load centers. This same procedure was
clearly indicated as one to be followed in Public Law 485 which authorized
the Colorado River Storage Project.

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