Arizona republican., 1913-08-26

by the degree in which the loss of those
 rights to the company, without substi tuting some equivalent source of cleo i trical supply, might affect its future ability to carry on it's business It was to overcome this difficulty, I judge that the restrictive provisions were in- serted in the contract. they being, as gather from the facts afforded by your predecessor, a substantial part of the consideration which the government gave and the company accepted for the surrender of it's water rights in per
 petuity. Apart from those provisions the lease is clearly unobjectionabIe. since it is not only confined to a term (ten years) permissible under the act of 1906. supra, but also provides for
 money consideration moving from the company to the government, which. ac- cording to the statement before me, was deemed by the secretary to be in
 itself an adequate return for the power
 furnished and a distinct advantage from the standpoint of the project.
 I proceed therefore, to consider the
 validity of the restrictive provisions contained in the eleventh article. By these the government agrees that, while serving power to the company under d general retailing of power to customers in the city of Phoenix" and from fur
 nishing power to any one in said city to be again sold or retailed" The act of 1906 (sec. 5, suprs) directs the sec retary, in making leases of surplus power. to give preference to municipal purposes; but it Is obvious that this direction could not have been intended fn nj with hat ;c nIa ir1I1y ho dominant purpose of the legislation, viz, to dispose of the power in each case for the best advantage of the ir- rigation project that produces 1t. Con- gress declares in this law that the moneys coming from leases shall be covered into the reclamation fund and placed to the credit of the particular project from which the power Is de- rived. and taken care to provide ex-
 pressly that no such lease shall be made as will impair the efficiency of the project. Through leases of this character. each project is to be made, to the extent possible, the means of paying for itself. The money proceeds operate to reduce pro tanto the finan- cial burdens which must ultimately fall upon the water users. Therefore it is the first duty of the secretary to  consider the welfare of the project and the water, users. The duty to prefer municipal purposes in the making Of leases is secondary and incidental. If, where surplus of power became available. opportunities should occur to dispose of it for municipal uses, and the terms offered in return were at least as advantageous to the project as the terms offered in behalf of other uses, it would be the duty of the sec retary to make the lease for the muni- cipal uses, but not so if in his judg- ment. the contract would prove more profitable if made in the other way
 If the lease for municipal uses prom ises less advantage. he could not make it without favoring the mere incident Of the statute to the detriment of its prime object. Following out this same principle, it is equally apparent that a lease which involves not only a dispo- sition to the lessee of a definite quan- tum of power, but also restriction