70 S T A T. ]
775
PUBLIC LAW 858-AUG. 1, 1956 CHAPTER 809
Public Law 858 AN ACT
To authorize the Secretary of the Interior to construct, operate, and maintain the Washoe reclamation project, Nevada and California.
August 1, 1956 [S. 497]
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That, for the pur- ti<^^pJSjecf,rf«S^^poses of furnishing water for the irrigation of approximately fifty caiif. thousand acres of land in the Carson and Truckee Eiver Basins, Nevada and California, providing drainage service to approximately thirty-one thousand acres of land therein, firming the existing water supplies of lands under the Truckee River storage project and the Newlands project, controlling floods, providing hydroelectric power, development of fish and wildlife resources, and for other beneficial purposes, the Secretary of the Interior is authorized to construct, operate, and maintain the Washoe reclamation project consisting of two principal reservoirs at the Stampede and Watasheamu sites, together with other necessary works for the impounding, diversion, and the delivery of water, the generation and transmission of hydroelectric power, and the drainage of lands. The dam at the Stampede site shall be so constructed as to permit its ultimate enlargement to a height at which the reservoir will have a capacity of approximately one hundred and seventy-five thousand acre-feet. SEC. 2. (a) In constructing, operating, and maintaining the works authorized in section 1 of this Act, the Secretary shall be governed by the Federal reclamation laws (Act of June 17, 1902, 32 Stat. 389, and 43 USC 371 note. Acts amendatory thereof or supplementary thereto) except as is otherwise provided in this Act. (b) Any contract entered into under section 9, subsection (d) of the Contract. Reclamation Project Act of 1939 (53 Stat. 1187, 1193; 43 U.S.C. 1952 edition, sec. 458h) for payment of those portions of the costs of con- 43 USC 485h. structing, operating, and maintaining the Washoe reclamation project which are properly allocable to irrigation and drainage and which are assigned to be paid by the contracting organization may provide for the repayment of the portion of the construction cost of the project assigned to any project contract unit or, if the contract unit be divided into two or more irrigation or drainage 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 period stated under normal conditions, permits variance in the required annual payments in the light of economic factors pertinent to the ability of the organization to p a y: Pro- S u p p l e m e n t al vided^ That any contract for a supplemental water supply for irriga- water supply. tion under this Act may omit provisions complying with the third sentence of paragraph (a) of section 46 of the Act of May 25, 1926 (44 Stat. 649) if such contract, in lieu of such provisions, provides that the 43 USC 423e. pro rata share of the irrigation allocation which is attributable to furnishing irrigation benefits, in each particular year, to land held in private ownership by any one ownef in excess of one hundred and sixty irrigated acres, shall be returned with interest determined in accordance with subparagraph (c) of this section, except that such payment for the excess lands shall not exceed an amount equal to the increased payment capacity of the excess lands, as determined by the Secretary of the Interior, resulting from the supplemental water supply. (c) Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, all Net revenue •• net revenues derived from the sale of commercial power from the Washoe reclamation project shall be applied, first, to the amortization of that portion of the cost of constructing the project which is allocated
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