BOARD02203

• Board Meeting Date: 3/20/1975
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Resolution
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

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Construction of any project can only start after final plans,
specifications and designs are finished. Timing or scheduling on final
plans and construction can only be had - supposedly and perhaps legally -
until after appropriations to each project have been made by Congress.
The last mentioned procedures are not well understood and often cause
a lot of misunderstanding between proponents for various reclamation
projects.

This, then, leads me to the matter of impoundment of funds. The only
honest purpose for such procedure can be the effort to combat the
dangers of inflation. I continue to be concerned - perhaps overly so,
but I do not think so - by a procedure which permits the recommendation
by representatives of the Executive Department of a project as they
recommend the same to Congress; the approval of the project by the Con-
gress and by the Executive Department; the recommendation of funds
through the appropriating process by Congress and the approval of the
action of Congress by the Executive; and, then the impoundment of funds
because of the adherence of the Executive to pri-nciples of economics,
which principles were or should have been known in the beginning as
well as in the process of finally providing the funds necessary to
carry out the work.

This brings me to the next matter of establishing priorities of attention,
either in the authorization of the project, the preparation of the
final plans for the project; and, the start of construction of projects.
When should priority of attention be made - in the first instance, the
second instance, or the third instance, and by whom?

When funds are finally provided for either one of the steps necessary
to final construction, there remains the question of whether or not
such funds should be used by the Bureau of Reclamation in their desire
to have efficiency on other projects already under construction. It
has always appeared to me that if such funds were transferred to
another project, then they should be used only in small percentages of
the amount appropriated for a project not yet ready, in the opinion of
the Bureau, to proceed.

There is no question but what the Bureau of Reclamation, to some extent
at least, has always established certain priorities for expenditure of
funds and accordingly the progress of the construction of a project.
There, of course, is quite a difference between the establishment of
priorities before authorization and the establishment of priorities of
construction after monies have been appropriated for construction of
projects. There is, of course, no doubt but what there must be certain
priorities of location and also of going work. Then, of course, there
is the question of establishment of priorities - either actually or
by attempts - by states having several projects under study or already
authorized within the borders of their states.

Representatives of the state should always be in accord before the
authorization of any project takes place. Examples of such cooperation
are to be found in the authorization and construction of the Colorado
Big Thompson, which, of course, was a WPA authorization, with

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