Problems in Public Power Administration in the Southwest—Some Arizona Applications

Abstract

SOMEWHAT arbitrarily, the term Southwest is being delimited in this paper to denote that part of the Southwest served'by Hoover Dam and other lower basin projects on the Colorado River. national government's ventures into power generation began as incidental adjuncts to its irrigation projects, and were designed to help pay the costs of its water services. Already, however, the generation and marketing of electric power have come to be a major concern of the Bureau of Reclamation, which built and has general responsibility for the operation of Hoover Dam. It should be noted that the Bureau continues to emphasize that its interest in power is merely incidental to its primary concern with irrigation; but, as a Task Force Report for the Hoover Commission pointed out, The generation of electric power has become more and more an important feature of its projects and might now be considered almost the primary interest of this agency. 1 In the West, most federally constructed dams have been built by the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers, but the electric power produced at these western dams is all marketed by the Department of the Interior through several of its agencies-the Bureau of Reclamation, the Bonneville Power Administration, the Southwestern Power Administration, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Bureau of Reclamation operates as an irrigation-promoting agency in all the seventeen western states, and as marketing agency for power in most of them. However, in the Northwest, Bonneville Power Administration markets federal power; and the Southwestern Power Administration markets federal power in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas (all within the Bureau's field of operations), and also in Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Colorado River Basin lies wholly within the area in which federal dams are built and their power sold by the Bureau of Reclamation. Beginning in 1906, Congress by a series of laws declared certain basic policies with respect to hydroelectric power generated at dams built by the federal government. A listing of some of these basic power policies seems essential to a discussion of power developments on the Colorado River: