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Show Reclamation law revisions By Helen C. Monberg The Senate is expected to take up the veek of July 9 a Committee-reported ill which makes sweeping changes in . he ancient 1902 reclamation law. Pi- It raises the acreage limitation of and that can be held by "a qualified Recipient" of water from a federally-financed federally-financed irrigation project from 160 Wicres, or, more commonly, 320 acres in 'ft he case of farmer and wife under the i902 law, to 1280 acres held in fee or heyjased, or both. Higher acreages can be eal-eld under equivalency provisions, ach iter It drops residency requirements Entirely. re. Unlimited leasing is permitted on a ear-to-year basis. i . Under the sponsorship of Sen. Frank "hurch, D-Idaho, the new bill (S 14) ."jported out of the Senate Energy and K atural Resources Committee on June ) appears to have an excellent chance p pass the Senate. And Senate passage , .' ill build up momentum for similar .' gislation to get thru the House In-1 In-1 ,rior Committee and the House.' loj. Where the Administration stands on m-jie Church bill is questionable at this jpj.)int. Western Resources Wrap-up erj.VRW) asked Interior Secretary Cecil uy. Andrus and Assistant Interior yen!cretary Guy Martin about the bill hen they testified before another , immittee this week while the Com- ?. ittee members absented themselves 15 vote in the Senate, ms ven Andrus was unhappy with the Senate nergy Committee action. "While aking provision for future clamation projects, it repeals the iclamation law," the Interior icretary said on June 26. He indicated at he could live with the new acreage nitation of 1,280 acres. But he was Ab-5pleased with the dropping of the besidency requirement entirely, the here-year unlimited leasing provision, etsd the repayment provision which ;he ables the water users in a water 'strict that repays construction costs ao'ider contract with the Interior jpartment to be freed from the reage limitation entirely. ew sked whether he would recommend ool 'eto of the bill if it gets thru Congress en-;tty much "as is," Andrus declined comment. "We have to be able to mpromise," Andrus told WRW. "i irtin spoke up: "The reclamation I v has three major provisions, I reage limitations, residency I juirements, and leasing restrictions le latter by regulation only)." When J ;y are dropped, there's not much left J the law, Martin stated. I Trom the way Andrus and Martin J ked, the Church bill appeared to I ve "veto" written all over it. But ; m, as Andrus noted, it has just j irted thru the legislative mill, and : my changes will be made before and ; it comes to the President's desk for j ;nature. ; The water organizations were i nerally satisfied with the bill. J.W. j 'at) O'Meara of the National Water i sources Association told WRW on me 22, "Sure, we're satisfied. It's like i e Ivory soap percentage. It takes re of 99.44 percent of the problems at we have had with the law." Gordon . Nelson, coordinator of the Farm-ater Farm-ater Alliance which has been pushing ; r changes in the reclamation law for ! m years since Interior, under court ! 'der, announced a strict crack-down ; l compliance in August 1977, agreed k ith O'Meara. "We certainly can live 1 ith it," Nelson stated. i TOTAL REPEAL ; OF RESIDENCY REQUIREMENT? Nelson raised an interesting point in i is Farm-Water Alliance Newsletter lis week. He stated, ' 'The bill says that sidency shall not be required for ualified recipients. It is not clear from ie text of the bill whether this is a lanket repeal of residency Jquirements in all cases or whether i ie repeal only applies to water j gencies which choose to come under . ie provisions of this bill. ..Some ! rojects which are already exempt I rcm the acreage limitation may not ! hoose to take advantage of the rovisions of S. 14. In those cases, the ill does not appear to provide for a lear-cut repeal of residency and eaves unsettled the question of whether the 1926 act repealed residency j equirements." I The two staff members of the Senate 3 Cnergy Committee who worked on the j iill draft-Staff Director Daniel A. )reyfus and Russell R. Brown-told j VRW, on inquiry, they could not think 1 if a single instance in which residency 1 'equirements would continue to apply. 9 h effect, they indicated residency is no j onger a qualification that anyone must j neet to qualify for water service in a j "eclamation project under the Church Mil. Nelson told WRW the question had come up relative to the Colorado-Big- Thompson project in Colorado which I has been exempt from the acreage J provisions of the reclamation law since a its authorization but not from the residency provisions. Lawyers clearly I feel there is a legal question on this J point because when the Imperial Irrigation District was exempt from the law in Committee mark-up on June 20, the Committee specifically spelled out that "the acreage limitations and residency requirements by the federal reclamation law shall not apply to lands within the Imperial Irrigation District of California." Residency requirements have not been enforced by Interior since 1926 when it appeared that the 1926 Omnibus Admustment Act had repealed it indirectly in-directly when it made the water districts rather than individual land owners liable for repayment contracts for water service in federally financed water projects built by the Bureau of Reclamation. Interior decided to enforce residency requirements in 1977 after it had been1 ordered by the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia to enforce acreage requirements of the 1902 federal reclamation law. Reclamation Commissioner R. Keigh Higginson explained to WRW at the time-Aug. 22, 1977: "In the past the Department has largely ignored the acreage limitation and the residency requirement in the law. Now we are . under court order to enforce the acreage limitation, and the Administration Ad-ministration has made a policy decision to enforce the residency requirement as well." OTHER PROVISIONS OF THE BILL It took the Committee all day on June 20 to mark up the Church bill, and many provisions which were controversial were left to the staff to refine. Dreyfus is making only technical changes in the bill, however, leaving it up to Senators who want to make substantive changes to do so by floor amendment when the bill comes up in the Senate next month. He and Brown are now working on the Committee report on the bill which they hope to file early next week, Committee sources told WRW on June 27. The bill was directed at solving problems with the 1902 act as interpreted by the Interior In-terior Department at this time rather than making top-to-bottom changes in the 1902 act and subsequent amendments. amend-ments. The acrage limitation is'1280 acres of Class 1 land and ranges up to 2240 acres of Class 4 land, with soil characteristics and length of growing season to be used as the factors taken into consideration by the Secretary of Interior in establishing an equivalency formula. The acreage limitation applies to land held in fee or leased or both, as a sum total. The bill provides, however, that a lesses may receive water in excess of the acreage limitation if he notifies the Secretary of Interior that he is leasing lands for only one year "without a right of renewal." Under this provision, Committee staff told WRW on June 26, a lessee could receive water service from the Bureau of Reclamation on 10,000 acres of land or more. If the lessee had an agreement with a lessor that did not include a right or option to renew, the provision appears to allow broad authority to lease. At least that is how the Interior Department Depart-ment is construing authority to lease under this provision, Andrus told WRW. The provision was designed to meet the needs of growers of lettuce and other specialty crops who operate mainly as lessees in several water districts in several states. They wanted to be able to lease for from three-to-five years without a renewal right, but the Committee cut it back to one year during mark-up. A "qualified recipient" is defined in the bill as an individual "or any legal entity" (corporation) having 25 shareholders or less. The bill does not mention family, as it is almost impossible im-possible to define a family under present-day conditions. The whole rationale of the reclamation law was based on encouraging family-sized farming operations. The bill limits the scope of the reclamation law to "lands which are included within a federal reclamation project which has been authorized by statute and which are served with a water supply by means of or thru works provided by such authorization pursuant pur-suant to contract." Thus no one without a contract for water service can be held in violation of the reclamation law. The bill specifies that acreage limitations will no longer apply on water projects on completion of repayment of construction costs as provided under their contracts with Interior. Early or accelaterated rapayment is permitted by water districts as "contracting 'entities" to allow the district water users to become exempt from the acreage limitation. |