BOARD00261

• Board Meeting Date: 5/13/1964
• Description: Table of Contents, Agenda, Minutes and Resolution
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

repeatedly and upon which the Secretary of
the Interior, through his commissioner of
Reclamation, attempted some explanation -
completely unsatisfactory explanation - at
the meeting of the Upper Colorado River Com-
mission here in this room a few weeks ago.

I

The whole crux of the matter is, if that
diversion of funds is returned to us promptly
and in lOO%, then there is no reason why we
should strenuously object. We do not believe
that we should be forced to wait until 1987
and then depend on Congress, at that time, to
make some provision for return. The time to
do it is now. So what we have proposed here
is that the Boulder Canyon Project Adjustment
Act be amended to provide that the Colorado
River Development Fund be immediately utilized
to return to us these diversions of power
revenues.

That fund was created for the purpose of
investigating projects in the Upper and Lower
Basins. The sum of $500,000 annually is appro-
priated from the revenues at Hoover Dam as
nonreimbursable money and is turned over to
the federal government in a general investiga-
tion program in the entire Colorado River
Basin. As far as we are thinking here in
Colorado, and I think in the entire upper -
Basin, the purposes of that Colorado River
Development Fund has already largely been
accomplished and the necessity for it generally
disappeared when the Colorado River storage
Project Act was authorized in 1956. This is
nonreimbursable money; this is a $500,000 a
year drain on the Federal Treasury which is
not charged to any project. So what we pro-
pose is that we join in the economy wave and
get this $500,000 returned to the Federal
Treasury, but credited to the Upper Basin
Fund. In this way the revenues would start
being returned to our fund almost immediately
and to the extent of lOO%.

1

You will note that contrary to the filling
criteria explanation, we have requested in