Opinion ID: 343208
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The 84th Congress

Text: 64 The House and Senate bills did not reach a vote in their respective chambers during the 83rd Congress and were left as unfinished business with the adjournment of Congress. Successor bills were introduced in the 84th Congress and one, S. 500, was eventually enacted as CRSP. 65
66 Senator Anderson of New Mexico, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Irrigation and Reclamation, introduced S.500 and presided over the hearings on the bill. He described S.500 as identical to S.1555 reported out of the Committee to the last Congress. Hearings on S.500 Before the Subcomm. on Irrigation and Reclamation of the Senate Comm. on Interior and Insular Affairs, 84th Cong., 1st Sess. 1 (1955). Therefore he requested the witnesses to view the hearings as supplemental to the previous hearings and to emphasize new material only. Id. 67 Testimony presented at these hearings further supports our view that not all geographic preferences are contrary to the legislative intent. Several witnesses emphasize the benefits of the project to the upper basin states. 46 Senator Hayden of Arizona denied that Arizona had any special claim to CRSP power from the Glen Canyon Dam to be built in Arizona. 47 68 Arizona Power contends that the Senate Committee's report on the hearings on S.500 reemphasized its prior position opposing preferential treatment of the upper basin. S.Rep. No. 128, 84th Cong., 1st Sess. (1955). It quotes the following paragraph from the report: 69 The committee's position on power marketing of the project is that the area to be served shall be governed only by economical transmission distance direct or through interconnections with other plants either in the Upper or Lower Basin. This policy is necessary to the economic and financial health of the project. This policy in the committee's opinion accords with established practice and policies of reclamation power operations. The committee intends that full equality of treatment be accorded to both Upper and Lower Basin power customers. Established preferences and sound business principles in accordance with existing reclamation law are intended to be applied in the marketing of power from the project, and it is not intended that Lower Basin customers should be discriminated against in any respect. 70 Id. at 14. We believe that Arizona Power's argument misses the mark. 71 We note first that the Committee described the power marketing area in much the same terms as it had in the 83rd Congress. See Section II, D, 2 b supra. It stated generally and by way of summation that there is a ready market throughout all the Colorado River Basin States. S.Rep. No. 128, supra, at 3. But it also described S.500 as designed to provide hydroelectric power to meet the projected rapidly increasing demand for power in the upper basin. 48 Second, we note that the hearings on S.500 shed no additional light on the power marketing problem. 72 We therefore conclude that the anti-discriminatory language in the Senate Committee's report merely reflects two policy decisions: first, that the reclamation law preferences be adhered to and second, that power not be marketed in favor of upper basin customers in such a way as to return less than the maximum recognizable power revenues. Arizona Power candidly admits that these two policies are articulated. When the anti-discrimination language of the last clause is construed in light of all that preceded it in the paragraph, it conforms precisely to our view. 73 Arizona Power does not argue that northern division customers served pursuant to the Marketing Criteria are outside economical transmission distances. Nor does it contend that implementation of the Marketing Criteria will impair the financial health of CRSP. Furthermore, Arizona Power fails to convince us that the established practice and policy of federal power marketing forbids all types of geographic preferences. We reject Arizona Power's theory that the Marketing Criteria clearly violate the legislative intent of the Senate Committee in the 84th Congress. 74
75 After the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs had issued its report and during the time that S.500 was debated on the floor of the Senate, the House Subcommittee on Irrigation and Reclamation held hearings on five CRSP bills introduced by upper division congressmen. 49 Hearings on H.R. 270 et al. Before the Subcomm. on Irrigation and Reclamation of the House Comm. on Interior and Insular Affairs, 84th Cong., 1st Sess., pts. 1 & 2 (1955). Subcommittee Chairman Aspinall of Colorado indicated, as Senate Subcommittee Chairman Anderson had done earlier, that the hearings in the 84th Congress were to be a continuation of the hearings on CRSP bills in the 83rd Congress. Id., pt. 1, at 1. 76 Despite Arizona Power's argument that the House Committee in the 83rd Congress had rejected all geographic preferences, witnesses before the Subcommittee repeatedly assumed that the upper basin (upper division) states would be the principal beneficiaries of CRSP power. 50 Arizona Power concedes as much. Yet the report of the House Committee omitted any clarification of what Arizona Power would consider an erroneous assumption. H.R.Rep. No. 1087, supra, at 1, reprinted in 1956 U.S.C.Cong. & Admin.News, p. 2346. Indeed, the Committee recognized the merit of the testimony submitted by representatives of the upper basin states advocating the enactment of CRSP to meet growing energy demands in their region. H.R.Rep. No. 1087, supra, at 4-5, reprinted in 1956 U.S.C.Cong. & Admin.News, pp. 2350-51. This serves as persuasive evidence that the Committee intended that the upper basin states be the primary beneficiaries of the legislation. 51 Therefore, the same basis standard of treatment for Colorado River Basin states advocated by the Committee cannot reasonably be interpreted to prohibit all types of geographic preferences. 77 Arizona Power's response to this evidence is to quote a discussion between Representative Rhodes of Arizona and Commissioner Dexheimer. 52 Arizona Power argues that the conversation reflects an understanding that the deletion of the mandatory preferences from the bills in the 83rd Congress was intended to bar all geographic preferences. This argument is not persuasive. The discussion in fact can more easily be interpreted as granting the Secretary broad discretion in marketing power as long as he complies with the reclamation law preferences and obtains optimum power revenues. 78 We therefore conclude that the House Committee's requirement that all basin states be on the same basis with respect to acquiring electric power, when viewed in light of the preceding legislative history, does not prohibit all geographic preferences in power marketing.