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I MR. PETERSON: MR. SPARKS: I MR. PETERSON: 1331 at any time by a request to the Bureau of Reclamation to initiate studies on those projects, but first they must ac- complish by direction of Congress the projects mentioned in Public Law 485. When that has been accomplished then they are free to undertake any other projects in addition to that." "That's going to take forever and a day before they get through with all those already set up on priority. I am wonder- ing if additional legislation couldn't be enacted that would make money available for these small projects immediately." "It's a question of how much money is going to be available to Region 4. Now if you are thinking of another source of money, that's one thing, but we had a little over a million dollars appropriated to Region 4 for investigations in western Colorado this fiscal year now currently under way. Actual- ly that strained the staff of Region 4 be- yond its immediate capabilities and that staff has been greatly increased in the past year. When it comes down to economic facts, we are now getting projects out, or will have them out, faster than we figure the government is going to appropriate money to build. Region 4 got approximately 36% of the entire Bureau of Reclamation budget for this fiscal year. Even if we maintained the pace of projects that we will have ready, we would have to greatly increase that ratio of allocation to Region 4 un- less the Federal Budget for reclamation is materially increased. We have in the plan- ning stage, I feel, about all that we can accomplish at the present time. Now take Ruedi for instance, it's a thing with no priority and the only way we could accomplish that priority is by Region 7 doing the necessary work on it, but that, nevertheless, will come under Public Law 485 we hope." "Larry, I don't think I made myself clear. I was thinking of only the financial