BOARD01799 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

now. Our objective is, ~nd has been, to come up with some workable solution in this thing whereby we can achieve maximum irrigation bene~ fits for the Colorado River storage Project. I would like to make one or two other statements if I could. I think you should under- I stand the background of this situation, perhaps a little differently than the way it has been' described by Mr. Sparks. Mr. Sparks describe~ this situation as though the Colorado River storage Project Act was authorized and then this great propaganda machine became launched by the private utilities who sought to pose toll gates on this project. That we injected ourselves into this picture and tried to force our will on the Congress with our proposals. ' Let me remind this Board that when the Colorad,o River Storage Project was before Congress for' authorization, all of our companies supported the project. The committee, itself, in its report authorizing the Act, noted that there was no public versus private power controversy in this matter. I personally believe that this is one of the reasons that we were suc- cessful in getting authorization of the Colorado River Storage project through the Congress in 1956 because we got a lot of support from other areas of the country which we might not have gotten had those areas thought that there was possibly a scheme involved in this project to convert a reclamation project into a public power project. Subsequent to that the Congressional Com-, mittees directed us, directed the Bureau to work with us, with respect to this combination, sYstem. In 1959 when it became apparent that the Bureau was proceeding on its own without consulting with the private utilities or other I utility users in the area, the Congressional Committee again directed the Bureau to work with the cqmpanies. So the whole history of this thing has been the insistence of Congress to see if some workable solution could be worked out, I would like to point out that there is a