43 U.S.C. § 617 : US Code - Section 617: Colorado River Basin; protection and development; dam, reservoir, and incidental works; water, water power, and electrical energy; eminent domain

Search 43 U.S.C. § 617 : US Code - Section 617: Colorado River Basin; protection and development; dam, reservoir, and incidental works; water, water power, and electrical energy; eminent domain

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 in this chapter, is 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 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 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; and to acquire by proceedings
in eminent domain, or otherwise, all lands, rights-of-way, and
other property necessary for said purposes.