Document Concerning Revised Program for the Lower Colorado

Document: "A revised program for the Lower Colorado," February 1967 (carbon copy), page 2Earlier proposal for the Central Arizona Project relied upon Federally financed hydroelectric power to provide the substantial amount of energy needed for project pumping purposes. "We now propose", Udall said, "To achieve substantially the same benefits for the project by Federal prepayment for 400 megawatts of capacity in a large efficient thermal plant built in the soyion Arizona under the sponsorship of the utilities associated with WEST. Securing low-cost pumping energy from a large efficient thermal generating plant will make it possible to maintain the $10 per acre-foot rate in to for agricultural water it about $10 per acre foot and most all of the traditional Bureau of Reclamation repayment requirements with either a small increase in M&I rates or a small ad valorem tax on the areas in Arizona that benefit from the project. Bureau of Reclamation technicians estimate that an M&I rate of $55 per acre-foot or an ad valorem tax of six tenths of a mill spread over Pinal, Maricopa and Prime counties would be required to achieve payout. Various combinations of the two alternatives are, of course, possible. "These decisions should be left to make in unclosed consullates with its state and local people as we see it", Udall noted. "The success we have achieved in securing a new high level of cooperation between public and private utilities in the region has made possible this new approach to water supply problems", theEpson Perfection 4870 Photo, 400 dpi, 24 bit, 3,188,764 byte