Arizona republican., 1912-07-17
A DAILY LOSS
 OF sl,0O0.00
Because Chairman Graham of Congressional Commit tee in Phoenix Last Win ter Cannot Be Readily Located

one of the first results of the con gressional investigation of the ex- penditures of the Reclamation Service on the Salt river project is the prob able loss of 5000 d day income from the sale of power.
 From private adviccs received from Washington. the situation is about like this. It will be remembered that some time ago an offer was made by the Inspiration Copper commany to take a block of power from Roosevelt to be used by that company and the Miami company jointly. Negotiations were entered into with the Reclamation Service and finally the subject was presented to the board of governors of the Water Users association by the local engineers. After discussing the matter and considering it from every side. the board agreed that the offer was a good one and that it was to the interest of the project to accept it, but reserved the right to approve the con tract when it should be prepared in definite terms. Enough was known to make the estimate of an income to the credit of the project of about 5000 a day if the contract was entered into at the given rate The contract was to provide that the mining companies were to build a transmission line from Roosevelt and were to take only sur plus power when it should he avail able For other times they were to provide a steam plant an an auxiliary as there might be weeks or even months at a time when it would not l. crate any power at all Similarly there might be times when in order to fulfill other contracts at higher rates the government might draw on the steam plant in an emergency at a definite cost per horse power and thus save the income which would otherwise be lost on account of some accident to plants or canals.
 So much for the preliminaries, and here is where the Investigating com mittee steps in. After the sessions oi the committee in Phoenix. it was inti- mated to the Washington office of the Reclamation Service that it would he well to go slow iii any matter per taining to the Salt river project until the findings of the committee were filed. When the power matter reached the stage noted above. the chairman of the committee. Congressman Ora ham was sought He was reported to he back home. probably attending to fence making of q political nature Then the next in rank, Congressman Hensley who was chairman of the subcommittee which visited Phoenix was found. He side-stepped the ques tion as to whether the entering into the power contract would be against the wishes of his committee. but wished to consult some of the other ranking members Finally it was de- cided to refer the matter by letter tC MT Graham. who may take it up be- fore he gets back to Washington ol at some other time in the future.
 And meanwhile The mining com panies have to know whether there iE any likelihood of their getting the power so they can make their ar. engagements about the auxiliary stean plant and tine transmission line in or der to make the power available fol use when it may be furnished. It may be they will withdraw their offer. i there is no certainty of getting q con tract within d reasonable time. anC the project will lose the income in,