CHAPTER III

FUNDING TRENDS

Funds available for work. Fiscal year 1954 funds appropriated for all civil-works activities of the Corps of Engineers amounted to $424,231,600. Individual appropriations are detailed in table 18, chapter VIII. Table 21, chapter VIII, shows the status of the funds advanced by local interests for navigation and flood-control improvements.

Annual appropriation. Chart IV indicates the fluctuations in annual appropriations since 1946 for civil-works functions and shows the downward trend since 1950, which, if continued, would increase the lag between water-resource development and the growing requirements to fulfill the expanding needs of the nation. Chart V shows actual appropriations adjusted to reflect rising construction costs since World War II. Although the actual appropriations for 1954 represent a 57-percent increase over 1946, application of the Engineering News Record's cost-ofconstruction index to the 1954 appropriation shows a decrease of 18 percent in the amount of work which the appropriation could produce as compared to the materially lower appropriation of a decade ago. This indication is offset in part by a continuing improvement in construction methods and procedures.

700

HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS

Expenditures (costs). During the fiscal year 1954, expenditures (costs) amounted to $528,462,000, of which $422,432,000 was for construction, general, and $106,030,000 for all other activities, except those funded by contributions, advances and collections from local sources and transfers from other agencies. Chart VI shows the comparative expenditure (cost) data since 1950.

CHAPTER IV

CURRENT PROJECT PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT

1. PROGRAM POLICY MATTERS

Various program policies and procedures were reviewed, improved, and modified. Those under consideration during the year having significant importance to the conduct of the program are discussed in the following paragraphs:

Real estate acquisition. The Secretaries of the Army and the Interior adopted a major revision of real-estate acquisition policy designed to reduce the amount of land acquired in fee at reservoir projects. The Corps of Engineers has taken necessary action to place this revised policy in effect.

Partnership arrangements for power. A number of proposals were introduced before Congress which contemplated the development of power by non-Federal interests in connection with flood-control and navigation projects under cooperative arrangements with the Federal Government. These proposals were carefully reviewed and the official comments of the Department of the Army, requested by congressional committees, were prepared. Laws were enacted or under consideration providing for the development by non-Federal interests of power at the Priest Rapids project (Columbia River, Wash.), the Coosa River development (Ala.), and the Markham Ferry project (Grand River, Okla.). In addition, legislation was under consideration which would authorize non-Federal participation in the cost of the Canyon project, Tex., for construction, operation, and maintenance of water conservation, stream-flow regulation, and development of hydroelectric power at such time as a power installation may be constructed.

Cost allocations. Representatives of the Corps of Engineers conferred with the Department of Interior and the Federal Power Commission with a view to the development of mutually acceptable practices in allocating the costs of multiple-purpose projects with power. These discussions culminated in an agreement among the three agencies concerned, under which all agencies recognize that each project purpose should share equitably in the savings resulting from multiple-purpose construction and should carry as a minimum its separable costs, or cost traceable to its inclusion in the multiple-purpose project. The agreement also recognizes a method of allocation, known as the "separable costs

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