Mrs. ProST. Are there elk in Alaska?

Mr. RHODE. Yes, ma'am; we have elk. One was killed this year, a world record so far as I know. It weighed dressed out 875 pounds of meat. The man who killed it said he saw some bigger ones.

Mr. BARTLETT. We are grateful for this, your second, appearance before the committee, Mr. Rhode.

Mr. RHODE. Thank you.

Mr. BARTLETT. Mr. Roberts, you are also back for the second time, but will you identify yourself for the record?

STATEMENT OF DARYL ROBERTS, ACTING DISTRICT MANAGER,
BUREAU OF RECLAMATION, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

Mr. ROBERTS. Daryl Roberts, Bureau of Reclamation.

Mr. BARTLETT. And your position with the Bureau here?

Mr. ROBERTS. Acting district manager.

Mr. BARTLETT. And I believe you, too, Mr. Roberts, have kindly consented to come before the committee again for whatever questioning may be indicated.

Mr. ROBERTS. That is right.

Mr. BARTLETT. Mrs. Pfost.

Mrs. Prost. Mr. Roberts, we, of course, are tremendously interested in the testimony we have heard with regard to industrial development in Alaska. Is it your opinion that one of the deterrents to industry locating here is the lack of sufficient hydroelectric power?

Mr. ROBERTS. In my opinion abundance of low-cost power would do much to attract industry. I think without power that it is going to be hard to get many sizable industries in Alaska.

Mrs. PrOST. We were very much interested in the Government hydroelectric powerplant near Palmer and we have heard quite a bit of testimony with regard to the Rampart series of dams. They tell us it will take some 6 to 10 dams to completely utilize the waters of the Yukon in that area. Is that true?

Mr. ROBERTS. That is quite true. There are several sites along the Yukon where you could put in a dam and generate hydroelectric power. Possibly depending on what storage you want to make at each site would be the number of sites you develop. However, there are very few of those sites that are what you would consider very small ones. About the minimum width of the river, and that would be down at what we call the Rampart site, is around about 1,800 feet. That is shore to shore line across the water. Up at the woods site it is over a mile wide. So there would be some tremendous expenditures there at the dam if and when that is built.

Mrs. Prost. Have you any estimate at all on the cost of the Rampart site?

Mr. ROBERTS. We really have never made a study of it. We have been in there and taken profiles to see what the feasibility would be and study the geology and get a rough idea for reconnaissance basis only. I have no idea just what the cost would be. It would depend a lot on how the project was developed-in other words, what type of dam it was and what was to be done with it.

Mr. MCFARLAND. Will you yield there for a question, Mrs. Pfost?
Mrs. Prost. I will be glad to.

Mr. MCFARLAND. The reconnaissance study indicated it might develop about 4 million kilowatts of power?

Mr. ROBERTS. I would be conservative to say it would run in that neighborhood. There is reason to believe it should. There is an abundance of water there.

Mr. MCFARLAND. Do you have any extensive data on the water supply over any appreciable number of years or is that based on a 1-year period? Or what do you have along that line?

Mr. ROBERTS. Actually there was a staff gage established there at Rampart, I think, last year, and I think there has been a staff gage up beyond Woodchopper. I can't recall the name of the site right now; Eagle, I believe. They have had miscellaneous measurements there for the past 2 years. There is no good water supply record on the Yukon in Alaska.

Mr. MCFARLAND. Is the gaging station put in by the Bureau of Reclamation or by the Geological Survey?

Mr. ROBERTS. By the Geological Survey.

Mr. MCFARLAND. And to your knowledge, do they have funds to continue that station so that they will continue to gather the basic data we need on the water supply?

Mr. ROBERTS. Actually, what we really need there is a recording gage, and there are not funds to provide that. A staff gage is fine, but you don't get a good, accurate record as we do with a recording gage. We do not have a recording gage, which would cost considerable money, and that is one thing we should have on the river.

Mr. MCFARLAND. One more question in connection with the Rampart. The question of transmission distance, I believe, was brought up at one of our hearings. How far is that site from, say, the Anchorage area which would be a load center?

Mr. ROBERTS. It would be possible to get it under a distance of 400 miles and also possible to transmit that power in the Seward area with transmission distance of under 500 miles. It has an economical location for transmitting power to both of those areas. They transmit power up to 625 miles in the States, which puts this well within the radius of power transmission.

Mr. MCFARLAND. Would you not say, Mr. Roberts, that because of the tremendous size of this particular project it does not lend itself to the normal gradual development, that it would more likely serve an industry that required a tremenodus amount of energy?

Mr. ROBERTS. It would require some gigantic industry or several of them, large industries I should possibly say, to use the power. It is something, as I see it right now, which needs an investigation with the idea of encouraging private enterprise to come in and develop it. I don't feel it is something the Government should move on to right at present.

Mr. MCFARLAND. Would the development in the upper Yukon Basin either by the Aluminum Company of America or by the Frobisher Co. is that right?

Mr. ROBERTS. Frobisher, yes.

Mr. MCFARLAND. Would that development affect your water supply at the Rampart site?

Mr. ROBERTS. It certainly would be adverse to development of that area because, if you divert it-and you could divert around about an average of 18,000 second-feet over here at what we call Taiya or over

in the Taku River-that amount of water would certainly adversely affect the development downstream on the Yukon.

Mr. MCFARLAND. Would it be your opinion, however, that the more feasible development would be at the Taiya site?

Mr. ROBERTS. From our studies-we made a report back in 1952, I think is the date, which was published, called Yukon-Taiya Report. It was a joint report. We worked with the Canadians on it. After it was out, it was placed on a confidential status. That has recently been declassified. At that time through our studies we were of the opinion that although we didn't have the opportunity to continue on with them, which we had planned to do, it appeared to us that development from Lindeman Lake into Taiya Valley would be the most economical development for that project. There is a difference of elevation that could be had with a tunnel about 1412 miles of 1,900 feet that that water would drop. Whereas, if you bring it into the Taku, you would get a drop of about 1,775, somewhere in that neighborhood. And you would require around about 21 miles of tunnel. So the Taku River development would be more expensive to do and you wouldn't have the same amount of head you would have for power purposes. You would have less head.

Mr. MCFARLAND. Mr. Roberts, are you familiar with the site of the Frobisher Co. ?

Mr. ROBERTS. Yes; I have made an aerial reconnaissance of it and have the layout, the proposal, and things like that, although I do not know their full intent on the thing. In fact, there is a scarcity of information on topography in that area. They have been studying that. Mr. MCFARLAND. It is an all-Canadian development and would foreclose your development proposed in your Yukon-Taiya report; is that right?

Mr. ROBERTS. It would replace the Yukon-Taiya development. If they developed it in its entirety, there would be no water.

Mr. MCFARLAND. In your opinion, is your development more feasible?

Mr. ROBERTS. It would appear to me it would be more feasible. Mr. MCFARLAND. The reason I bring that point up is because the testimony we heard this morning was that the engineers for the Frobisher Co. themselves had stated that the site of the Bureau, which is the one the Aluminum Company of America was interested in, was the most feasible site.

Apparently, Mr. Roberts, you feel that this particular development is of great importance to the United States?

Mr. ROBERTS. It definitely would be, because it would be a large block of power. It would be low-cost power. It would support an installed capacity over 2 million kilowatts continuously, which is substantial development. It would take an industrial giant or several of them to utilize its full power development.

Mr. MCFARLAND. Would it be the job of the State Department and some kind of a commission to work out an agreement between the two Governments?

Mr. ROBERTS. Well, it seems to me that the thing will have to be worked out at State Department level and through an international joint commission.

Mr. MCFARLAND. And has the Department of the Interior made any advance to the State Department?

Mr. ROBERTS. We have requested that the State Department find out what the Frobisher people propose, so that we can-I am pretty certain the military has made the same request-in order to give us the opportunity to study the thing out and to present our problems and to arrive at some understanding on the thing.

Mr. MCFARLAND. I want to ask you briefly about two other sites because of previous testimony we heard.

One of them was a site that apparently would serve the needs of the Anchorage area and apparently has high priority in your planning. It is the Caribou project. What size development would that be?

Mr. ROBERTS. There we are a little handicapped on water supply information. Prior to May of this year there was no measurement on the stream, and we were able through the generosity of the Matanuska Electric Association-they provided us with $2,000-to establish a stream gage. We feel we need a little period of record in order to ascertain the true installed capacity there. However, estimating, we were inclined to believe it would be comparable to the Eklutna project, which would mean about 30,000-kilowatt installation.

Mr. MCFARLAND. The other project that was mentioned both at Anchorage and Fairbanks is on the Susitna Basin, Devils Canyon project. What size development would that be?

Mr. ROBERTS. That site could develop initially up to 195,000 kilowatts, and then if upstream storage was provided, the thing could be increased to around 400,000 kilowatts. Initially we propose a small development to take care of the immediate needs, but we do feel that if that project were permitted to go ahead the power market would certainly develop to utilize the full capacity of the site.

Mr. MCFARLAND. That would serve the Fairbanks area, the Anchorage area, that rail belt?

Mr. ROBERTS. The thing is it would be set up to serve the rail belt area extending from Fairbanks to Anchorage and on to Seward, if there was any reason to carry the line down. Its transmission distance would be about 185 miles to Fairbanks, and it could be less than 160 miles to Anchorage if we made a submarine cable crossing there over Cook Inlet.

Mr. MCFARLAND. In connection with Eklutna, several of our members visited Eklutna and I believe they all agree that even though the cost was increased it still remained a feasible and worthwhile project. I believe you correct me if I am wrong-that all of the Eklutna power is under contract and is still the cheapest energy developed in that area. Is that correct?

Mr. ROBERTS. That is correct. In that regard, I was very pleased to read the article that came out in the Anchorage Times. I think Mr. Dawson made the statement that he was very pleased with the development, and instead of wanting to sell Eklutna for 50 cents on the dollar, he felt that the project is of such value that if there is going to be any sale, it should be a dollar and a half on the dollar.

I would like to point out something else with respect to that project. It has had a lot of adverse publicity on costs. You hear most any kind of a figure quoted.

Initially the project was set up to cost $20,365,000. It will now cost us completed something under $29,500,000, which will be an increased cost of about 44 percent.

Something else we considered in that is that through this increased cost we have also increased the energy output. Previously there was set up to be developed 95 million kilowatt-hours annually of firm power. Under this development we have today we will generate 137 million kilowatt-hours, which is an increased energy output of 42 percent, which to me makes it a very excellent project.

Mr. MCFARLAND. What you are actually saying, then, is that the costs per kilowatt-hour has not increased?

Mr. ROBERTS. Costs on energy certainly have not increased.

Mr. MCFARLAND. Mr. Roberts, we found in Anchorage apparently there are three sources of energy, one being the Eklutna powerplant, the second being the military steam plant, and the third being the Chugach Electric. Is that about right?

Mr. ROBERTS. That is about right. Anchorage City has a small amount of diesel generation standby.

Mr. MCFARLAND. I see. Is there a tie between the systems so that they can operate as one power system?

Mr. ROBERTS. There is a tie except with the military. The transmission line was put in by the military, but the switching gear to enable us to receive power from the military has not been placed in operation yet. It is my understanding it will be at the time they complete this new steam plant they are working on now.

Mr. MCFARLAND. In the operation of the Eklutna powerplant, do you have dump energy, secondary energy, that could be made usable by the military in lieu of operating their steam plant?

Mr. ROBERTS. We have an average of 20 million kilowatt-hours annually that would be nonfirm energy that could be made available to the military or other interests as cheap power.

Mr. MCFARLAND. In your opinion, would that result in decreased costs to the military?

Mr. ROBERTS. It certainly would be cheaper than their operation of steam powerplant, and it also would materially help out kilowatthour costs on the Eklunta plant. It could reduce the rate, which is around about somewhere between 10 and 11 mills, down to possibly 9 to 10 mills if we were able to sell this 20 million kilowatt-hours of annual dump energy.

Mr. MCFARLAND. And are you presently discussing or negotiating with the military with respect to that?

Mr. ROBERTS. We are. We have been trying to arrange emergency standby agreement with them. We have been working on this for quite a while and to date we have been unable to do so.. There seems to be a conflict up there. We have the Army and the Air Force, and they both have a different operation, which makes it very confusing, Then, too, the colonels up there have about a 2-year tour of duty, and about the time we get lined up to go through with something somebody moves away and we have to start all over again almost. It has been a little difficult in that way.

Mr. MCFARLAND. In Anchorage, Mr. Roberts, we had some testimony from Colonel Farrell, the district engineer, as to their activity and studies in Alaska, and apparently the Corps of Engineers in connection with their work are also authorized to study and report upon hydroelectric-power sites.

My question to you: Is there coordination between your office and the district engineer? Is there an interchange of information so that