DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D. C., December 26, 1929. SIR: I have the honor to comply with the requests contained in your letters of August 3 and August 8, 1929, for my opinion upon certain questions arising under the Boulder Canyon project act (45 Stat. 1057), which you state as follows: 1. Whether or not advances from the General Treasury to the Colorado River Dam fund for construction costs of the All-American Canal, and disbursements from the Colorado River Dam fund for that purpose, should be interest-bearing. 2. In fixing the sale rates for power to be generated at Boulder Dam, must provision be made for amortization within 50 years of the $25,000,000 allocated by the act to flood control? 3. Must provision be made for payment out of power proceeds, during the 50-year period of amortization, of interest upon the principal of the $25,000,000 allocated to flood control? If so, should interest start to run from the first appropriation made from the General Treasury to the Colorado River Dam fund? The provisions of the Boulder Canyon project act which are especially relevant to these questions are the following: Be it enacted * * * That for the purpose of controlling the floods, improving navigation and regulating the flow of the Colorado River, providing for storage and for the delivery of the stored waters thereof for reclamation of public lands and other beneficial uses exclusively within the United States, and for the generation of electrical energy as a means of making the project herein authorized a self-supporting and financially solvent undertaking, the Secretary of the Interior, subject to the terms of the Colorado River compact hereinafter mentioned, is hereby authorized to construct, operate, and maintain a dam and incidental works in the main stream of the Colorado River at Black Canyon or Boulder Canyon adequate to create a storage reservoir of a capacity of not less than twenty million acre-feet of water and a main canal and appurtenant structures located entirely within the United States connecting the Laguna Dam, or other suitable diversion dam, which the Secretary of the Interior is hereby authorized to construct if deemed necessary or advisable by him upon engineering or economic considerations, with the Imperial and Coachella Valleys in California, the expenditures for said main canal and appurtenant structures to be reimbursable, as provided in the reclamation law, and shall not be paid out of revenues derived from the sale or disposal of water power or electric energy at the dam authorized to be constructed at said Black Canyon or Boulder Canyon, or for water for potable purposes outside of the Imperial and Coachella Valleys: Provided, however, That no charge shall be made for water or for the use, storage, or delivery of water for irrigation or water for potable purposes in the Imperial or Coachella Valleys; also to construct and equip, operate, and maintain at or near said dam, or cause to be constructed, a complete plant and incidental structures suitable for the fullest economic development of electrical energy from the water discharged from said reservoir; * * * SEC. 2. (a) There is hereby established a special fund, to be known as the "Colorado River Dam fund" (hereinafter referred to as the "fund"), and to be available, as hereafter provided, only for carrying out the provisions of this act. All revenues received in carrying out the provisions of this act shall be paid into and expenditures shall be made out of the fund, under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior. (b) The Secretary of the Treasury is authorized to advance to the fund, from time to time and within the appropriations therefor, such amounts as the Secretary of the Interior deems necessary for carrying out the provisions of this act, except that the aggregate amount of such advances shall not exceed the sum of $165,000,000. Of this amount the sum of $25,000,000 shall be allocated to flood control and shall be repaid to the United States out of 62%1⁄2 per centum of revenues, if any, in excess of the amount necessary to meet periodical payments during the period of amortization, as provided in section 4 of this act. If said sum of $25,000,000 is not repaid in full during the period of amortization, then 621⁄2 per centum of all net revenues shall be applied to payment of the remainder, interest at the rate of 4 per centum per annum accruing during the year upon the amounts so advanced and remaining unpaid shall be paid annually out of the fund, except as herein otherwise provided. (c) Moneys in the fund advanced under subdivision (b) shall be available only for expenditures for construction and the payment of interest, during construction, upon the amounts so advanced. No expenditures out of the fund shall be made for operation and maintenance except from appropriations therefor. (d) The Secretary of the Treasury shall charge the fund as of June 30 in each year with such amount as may be necessary for the payment of interest on advances made under subdivision (b) at the rate of 4 per centum per annum accrued during the year upon the amounts so advanced and remaining unpaid, except that if the fund is insufficient to meet the payment of interest the Secretary of the Treasury may, in his discretion, defer any part of such payment, and the amount so deferred shall bear interest at the rate of 4 per centum per annum until paid. (e) The Secretary of the Interior shall certify to the Secretary of the Treasury, at the close of each fiscal year, the amount of money in the fund in excess of the amount necessary for construction, operation, and maintenance, and payment of interest. Upon receipt of each such certificate the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized and directed to charge the fund with the amount so certified as repayment of the advances made under subdivision (b), which amount shall be covered into the Treasury to the credit of miscellaneous receipts. * SEC. 4. (b) Before any money is appropriated for the construction of said dam or power plant, or any construction work done or contracted for, the Secretary of the Interior shall make provision for revenues by contract, in accordance with the provisions of this act, adequate in his judgment to insure payment of all expenses of operation and maintenance of said works incurred by the United States and the repayment, within fifty years from the date of the completion of said works, of all amounts advanced to the fund under subdivision (b) of section 2 for such works, together with interest thereon made reimbursable under this act. Before any money is appropriated for the construction of said main canal and appurtenant structures to connect the Laguna Dam with the Imperial and Coachella Valleys in California, or any construction work is done upon said canal or contracted for, the Secretary of the Interior shall make provision for revenues, by contract or otherwise, adequate in his judgment to insure payment of all expenses of construction, operation, and maintenance of said main canal and appurtenant structures in the manner provided in the reclamation law. If during the period of amortization the Secretary of the Interior shall receive revenues in excess of the amount necessary to meet the periodical payments to the United States as provided in the contract, or contracts, executed under this act, then immediately after the settlement of such periodical payments he shall pay to the State of Arizona 184 per centum of such excess revenues and to the State of Nevada 18 per centum of such excess revenues. SEC. 5. That the Secretary of the Interior is hereby authorized, under such general regulations as he may prescribe, to contract for the storage of water in said reservoir and for the delivery thereof at such points on the river and on said canal as may be agreed upon, for irrigation and domestic uses, and generation of electrical energy and delivery at the switchboard to States, municipal corporations, political subdivisions, and private corporations of electrical energy generated at said dam, upon charges that will provide revenue which, in addition to other revenue accruing under the reclamation law and under this act, will in his judgment cover all expenses of operation and maintenance incurred by the United States on account of works constructed under this act and the payments to the United States under subdivision (b) of section 4. * * After the repayments to the United States of all money advanced with interest, charges shall be on such basis and the revenues derived therefrom shall be kept in a separate fund to be expended within the Colorado River Basin as may hereafter be prescribed by the Congress. * * * SEC. 7. That the Secretary of the Interior may, in his discretion, when repayments to the United States of all money advanced, with interest, reimbursable hereunder, shall have been made, transfer the title to said canal and appurtenant structures, except the Laguna Dam and the main canal and appurtenant structures down to and including Syphon Drop, to the districts or other agencies of the United States having a beneficial interest therein in proportion to their respective capital investments under such form of organization as may be acceptable to him. * * * SEC. 9. That all lands of the United States found by the Secretary of the Interior to be practicable of irrigation and reclamation by the irrigation works authorized herein shall be withdrawn from public entry. Thereafter, at the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, such lands shall be opened for entry, in tracts varying in size but not exceeding one hundred and sixty acres, as may be determined by the Secretary of the Interior, in accordance with the provisions of the reclamation law, and any such entryman shall pay an equitable share in accordance with the benefits received, as determined by the said Secretary, of the construction cost of said canal and appurtenant structures; said payments to be made in such installments and at such times as may be specified by the Secretary of the Interior, in accordance with the provisions of the said reclamation law, and shall constitute revenue from said project and be covered into the fund herein provided for: * * * SEC. 12. * * * "Reclamation law" as used in this act shall be understood to mean that certain act of the Congress of the United States approved June 17, 1902, entitled "An act appropriating the receipts from the sale and disposal of public land in certain States and Territories to the construction of irrigation works for the reclamation of arid lands," and the acts amendatory thereof and supplemental thereto. * * * SEC. 14. This act shall be deemed a supplement to the reclamation law, which said reclamation law shall govern the construction, operation, and management of the works herein authorized, except as otherwise herein provided. * * Whether or not advances from the General Treasury to the Colorado River Dam fund for construction costs of the All-American Canal, and disbursements from the Colorado River Dam fund for that purpose, should be interest-bearing. The All-American Canal is one of the works which the Secretary of the Interior is authorized to construct under section 1 of the act, being therein described as "a main canal and appurtenant structures located entirely within the United States connecting the Laguna Dam [near the Mexican boundary], * with the Imperial and Coachella Valleys in California." The other physical constructions thereby authorized are “a dam and incidental works at Black Canyon or Boulder Canyon" and a power plant at or near that dam. Section 1 recites the purposes of these constructions as controlling the floods, improving navigation, and regulating the flow of the Colorado River, providing for storage and for the delivery of the stored waters thereof for reclamation of public lands and other beneficial uses, and for the generation of electrical energy as a means of making the project a self-supporting and financially solvent undertaking. The Colorado River Dam fund," to which your question relates, is established by section 2 (a) of the act as a special fund to be available only for carrying out the provisions of the act. It is further provided that "revenues received in carrying out the provisions of this act shall be paid into and expenditures shall be made out of the fund, under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior." It is thus apparent that a single fund is provided into which and out of which all receipts and disbursements connected with any phase of the project must |