BOARD01567

• Board Meeting Date: 5/1/1975
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

and 50 government employees during the third year of the construction
period. The increased payroll and construction needs would contribute
to increased retail sales for local merchants and greater demands for
goods and services.

Indirect effects on the economy of the area would include housing I
developments, increased visitations to the area, and possible coal
developments in the Tongue Mesa coal field on Cimarron Ridge. The
increase in yields and farm investment resulting from irrigation W09ld
broaden and stabilize the local agricultural economic base.

The costs of the project, based on July, 1974 prices, would be
$82,900,000. Annual operation, maintenance, and replacement costs are
estimated at $487,000. Congress has appropriated $650,000 in construction
funds for the project. In March of this year $400,000 of this was
released for use in fiscal year 1975. The current budget includes
requests for release of the remaining $250,000 and for additional appro-
priations of $1,271,000. If the proposed budget is approved, $1,521,000
in construction funds will be available next fiscal year. If these funds
are made available in F.Y. 1976, they will be used for such things as to
secure rights-of-way for Ridgway Dam and Reservoir, negotiate a contract
with the State Highway Department, award a contract for Ridgway Dam site
and specification designs.

In 1977 - Specification design work Dallas Divide
Contract for relocating highway
Award prime contract on Ridgway Dam

The project as planned has a benefit to cost ratio of better than 2 to 1.
This table shows the derivation of the annual benefits.

Thank you.

Mr. Sparks: What has been presented is the field draft of the definite
plan report. This project as originally conceived and authorized by the
Congress was primarily for agricultural purposes. In the feasibility
report presented to the Congress, t:1e overwhelmingly preponderance of
the water was earmarked for irrigation. After the p~oject was authorized,
a report was issued by the National Water Commission which severely
criticized irrigated agriculture, and the report to the President and to
the Congress by that Commission recommended that the federal government
not sponsor any further irrigation in the United States.

That report was bitterly contested by people throughout the United StateS'1
and particularly from the West. Governor Love made a personal appearance
in Washington before the Commission and argued that the report was based
on many false assumptions. Nevertheless, the Nixon administration
adopted the report and attempted to carry out many of its provisions.

One of those provisions, as I stated, was the "bad mouthing" of irrigated
agriculture. The administration adopted a policy that it would not
approve any further reclamation projects which were devoted primarily to
agriculture.

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