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PUBLIC LAW 992-AUG. 6, 1956 Public Law 992
August 6, 1956 [5,3101]
Crooked R i v e r reclamation p r o j ect, Oreg. Authorization.
Conditions.
43 USC 371 note.
43 USC 390a.
[70 S T A T.
CHAPTER 980
AN ACT To authorize construction by the Secretary of the Interior of the Groolsed River Federal reclamation project, Oregon.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That, for the purpose of furnishing water for the irrigation of arid and semiarid lands (including approximately twenty thousand acres of land in Crook County, Oregon) and for other beneficial purposes, the Secretary of the Interior is authorized to construct, operate, and maintain the Crooked River Federal reclamation project. The principal new works of the said project shall include a dam and storage reservoir at or near the Prineville site, a diversion dam and canal below said reservoir, and related pumping plants, canals, conduits, drains, and other facilities. The operation of said works shall ba integrated with the operation of the existing Ochoco Dam and Reservoir and of the Government-owned generator in the Cove powerplant of the Pacific Power and Light Company, which works shall, for the purpose of this Act, be considered as works of the Crooked River project. SEC. 2. I n constructing, operating, and maintaining the Crooked River project, the Secretary shall be governed by the Federal reclamation laws (Act of June 17, 1902, 32 Stat. 388, and Acts amendatory thereof or supplementary thereto), except that (1) any contract entered into under section 9, subsection (d) of the Reclamation Project Act of 1939 (53 Stat. 1187, 1193; 43 U.S.C. sec. 485h) for payment of those portions of the costs of constructing, operating, and maintaining the project which are allocated to irrigation and assigned to be paid by the contracting organization shall provide for the repayment of the portion of the construction cost of the project assigned to any contract unit or, if the contract unit be divided into two or more blocks, to any such block over a period of not more than fifty years (exclusive of any permissible development period) or as near thereto as is consistent with the adoption and operation of a variable payment formula which, being based on full repayment within the said period under average conditions, permits variance in the required annual payments in the light of economic factors pertinent to the ability of the organization to pay; (2) the construction charge obligation of the Ochoco Irrigation District set out in its contract with the United States dated April 24, 1950, may, if the district so elects, be merged with and paid under the same conditions as other obligations undertaken by it under this Act; (3) that portion of the cost of constructing the new works of the project which is allocated to irrigation but is beyond the ability of the water users to pay shall be charged to and returnable to the reclamation fund from net revenues derived by the Secretary of the Interior from his sale of power from the Dalles project, Oregon, which are over and beyond the amounts required to amortize the power investment therein, as provided in section 5 of the Act of December 22, 1944 (58 Stat. 887, 890; 16 U.S.C. sec. 825s), and to return interest on the unamortized balance of said investment; and (4) construction of any of the new works herein authorized shall not ba commenced until the Secretary shall have certified to the Congress, in accordance with the provisions of the Act of July 31, 1953 (67 Stat. 261, 266), that an adequate soil survey and land classification of not less than twenty thousand acres of land to be served by the project has been made and that those lands are susceptible to the production of agricultural crops by means of irrigation or that their susceptibility to the sustained production of agricultural crops by means of irrigation has been demonstrated
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