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Show Inflation makes Colorado Project costs soar; adds to time schedule away as it was estimated to be when the project was authorized in 1956. order to hasten completion. Other observers are more cautious in their estimates, but by most methods of reckoning, the completion date for the project appears still 10 to 20 years in the future-about as far Foundation noted. Some supporters of the Colorado Project believe that this fact will influence future sessions of Congres to increase appropriations to the project in When the Colorado Storage project was approved almost 20 years ago, its total cost was estimated at $760 million and its construction time at 15 to 20 years. Now--at a date when original estimates called for construction to be nearing completion-the target date for completion appears ap-pears almost as far off as at the inception of the project, and cost estimates have more than tripfed, according to Utah Foundation, the private, nonprofit non-profit public service agency. Basic reason for the existing situation is the inflation which has engulfed the entire economy, the Foundation points out in a research brief released this week. Similar problems are faced by the Interstate Highway System and other major public works projects which are financed by annual congressional appropriations. The Colorado River Storage Project was first authorized by congressional action in April, 1956, providing for four major storage dams (although no money was then appropriated for one of them, the Curecanti in Colorado) and 11 "participating projects". The storage dams were designed to provide long-term long-term holdover storage to enable the Upper Colorado River Basin States of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming to meet their commitments to the Lower Basin States of Arizona, Nevada, and California. "Participating projects" were designed to permit the Upper Basin States to put their own share of Colorado River water to use in agricultural, industrial, and culinary developments. Waters of the Colorado River System were divided between states of the Upper and Lower Basins by the Colorado River Compact of 1922. At the time of authorization, total cost of the project was estimated at $760 million, and original plans were scaled down to keep the cost well below $1 billion, a figure never previously approached by any reclamation project. As inflation kept the construction con-struction cost index spiralling upward and construction schedules were slowed by the lower-than-anticipated congressional appropriations to the project, over-all costs shot upward, the Foundation reported. Through June 30, 1975, more than $1 billion will have been appropriated for the Colorado Project, and estimated cost to complete is nearly $1.5 billion more--a figure considered certain cer-tain to go still higher because of continuing inflation. On the basis of present estimates, not providing for future inflation, cost of the completed project would be more than three and one-quarter times the original estimate. Authorized ceiling for project costs was raised from the original $760 million to $1.37 billion-with an "escalator factor" tied to the construction cost index to provide for future inflation- in 1972. Additional units were added to the project, and funding provided for Curecanti Storage Dam, in 1962, 1964, and 1968. Three of the storage dams-Glen dams-Glen Canyon, Flaming Gorge, and Nava jo-are substantially completed and are generating electrical energy, receipts of which go toward repayment of project costs. Through the fiscal year ended June 30, 1974, approximately ap-proximately $228 million had come into the Colorado River Basin Fund (for project cost repayment), $37 million of that amount accruing in fiscal 1974. Flow of money into the Basin Fund will accelerate as units of the over-all project are completed com-pleted and benefits realized. A substantial part of the Colorado River Storage Project -and of all multi-purpose reclamation projects-is repaid to the Federal Government directly, and additional benefits return indirectly to the economy, the Foundation points out. While the proportion of costs that are so repaid and returned is a matter of dispute between supporters and opponents of reclamation, there is agreement that considerable con-siderable repayment is made "Therefore, once a reclamation project had been begun, the sooner it is completed, the sooner the direct and indirect benefits begin to flow back into the national economy." the |