Rob Bishop: “I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, Phelps Dodge, just to give you some background of this…”

“I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, Phelps Dodge, just to give you some background of this particular legislation, is a large mining company that built what is now the Cragin project in the 1960s to supply water to its mine complex. Phelps Dodge transferred ownership of the project to the Salt River Project, that's known as the SRP, after the former realized it was not necessary for mining operations. At the request of the SRP and with the support of Phelps Dodge and the Bureau of Reclamation, the Arizona Water Rights Settlement Act authorized transfer of the title of the project and the associated lands from SRP to Reclamation in 2005. Even though the Federal Government owns the project, SRP stills operates and maintains it pursuant to the 1917 contract between SRP and the United States. The project consists of a number of facilities, including a 147-foot- high dam, a 15,000-acre-foot reservoir, a diversion tunnel and pump shaft, pumping plant, priming reservoir, a 10-mile-long pipeline, electrical transmission line, and a small generating plant which supplies power to the project's pumping plant. The project helps SRP to supply water to the Phoenix metropolitan area and to the town of Payson and neighboring communities in northern Gila County. Implementation of the title transfer under Public Law 108-45 has been controversial due to misunderstandings between the U.S. Forest Service, Reclamation, and SRP.…”