Volume 68 · 753
Public Law 83–606
To authorize the Secretary of the Interior to construct, operate, and maintain the Talent division of the Rogue River Basin reclamation project, Oregon.
Approved August 20, 1954
Statutory text
AN ACT
To authorize the Secretary of the Interior to construct, operate, and maintain the Talent division of the Rogue River Basin 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 purposes of furnishing water for the irrigation of approximately eighteen thousand acres of land in Jackson County, Oregon, controlling floods, and providing hydroelectric power, and for other Beneficial purposes, the Secretary of the Interior is authorized to construct, operate, and maintain the Talent division of the Rogue River Basin project consisting of two principal reservoirs at the Howard Prairie and Emigrant sites, together with other necessary works for the collection, impounding, diversion, and delivery of water, the generation and transmission of hydroelectric power and operations incidental thereto. The construction, operation, and maintenance of the Talent division shall be made in accordance with the report of the Secretary of the Interior thereon dated June 3, 1954: Provided, That the Green Springs powerplant may be constructed with a capacity of sixteen thousand kilowatts. The Secretary is further authorized to undertake the rehabilitation of works of the Medford and Rogue River Valley Irrigation Districts as under the provisions of the Act of October 7, 1949 (63 Stat.
724), as amended.
Sec. 2.
In constructing, operating, and maintaining the Talent
Laws governing.
division, 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 as is otherwise provided in this Act.
Any contract entered into under section 9, subsection (d),
Contract payments.
of the Reclamation Project Act of 1939 (53 Stat. 1187, 1193; 43 U. S. C., 1946 ed., sec. 485h), for payment of those portions of the costs of constructing, operating, and maintaining the Talent division which are properly allocable to irrigation and which are assigned to be paid by the contracting organization shall provide for the repayment of the portion of the construction cost of the division 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 sixty 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 average conditions, permits variance in the required annual payments in the light of economic factors pertinent of the ability of the organization to pay.
Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary,
Commercial power sales.
Use of revenue.
all net revenues derived from the sale of commercial power from the Talent division shall be applied, first, to the amortization of that portion of the cost of constructing the division which is allocated to commercial power with interest on the unamortized balance thereof at the average rate (which rate shall be certified by the Secretary of the Treasury) paid by the United States on its marketable long-term securities outstanding on the date of this Act and, thereafter, to the amortization of that portion of the cost of constructing the division which is allocated to irrigation but which is beyond the ability of the contracting irrigation organization to repay as provided above. Contracts for the disposition of power from the Talent division shall be entered into with the financial objective of returning the power allocation with interest plus as much of the irrigation allocation as is beyond the ability of the water users to repay, all as hereinbefore provided, within a period of not more than sixty years.
Sec. 3.
There is hereby authorized to be appropriated for construction
Appropriation.
of the Talent division and for the rehabilitation work authorized to be undertaken by section 1 of this Act, out of any moneys in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, the sum of $22,900,000 plus such amounts, if any, as may be required by reason of changes in construction costs as indicated by engineering cost indexes applicable to the type of construction involved therein.
Approved August 20, 1954.