16 U.S.C. § 831m: Allocation and charge of…

Summary

The Board must study the current value of Dam Numbered 2, the steam plants at Nitrate Plant Numbered 1 and Numbered 2, and the cost of Cove Creek Dam. The study must decide how much of each property’s value or cost is for five things: flood control, navigation, fertilizer, national defense, and power development. The Board’s findings become final once the President approves them, and those numbers must be used for the books. The same kind of cost finding and allocation must be done for any similar dams or plants later built and given to the Board. By January 1, 1937, the Board must send Congress its allocation statement for properties finished before the end of the previous fiscal year, and after that it must include allocations for the prior fiscal year in each annual report. The Board must keep full, uniform accounts of the costs to generate, transmit, and distribute electric power and to produce defense and agricultural chemicals. It must follow the Federal Power Commission’s accounting system, or the Commission must create one if none exists. The Board must keep physical and operating records that help show real costs, values, and the best ways to run plants. It must report these data and recommendations to Congress and share them with the Federal Power Commission and other federal and state agencies when practicable. To help make projects pay for themselves, surplus power should be sold at rates that bring in more money than it costs to make the power at normal plant capacity. Along with the station-by-station cost statements required by section 831h, each annual report must show total power cost for the year, the average cost per kilowatt-hour, the rates charged, who bought the power, and copies of all power-sale contracts.

Title 16, §831m

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The Board shall make a thorough investigation as to the present value of Dam Numbered 2, and the steam plants at nitrate plant numbered 1, and nitrate plant numbered 2, and as to the cost of Cove Creek Dam, for the purpose of ascertaining how much of the value or the cost of said properties shall be allocated and charged up to (1) flood control, (2) navigation, (3) fertilizer, (4) national defense, and (5) the development of power. The findings thus made by the Board, when approved by the President of the United States, shall be final, and such findings shall thereafter be used in all allocation of value for the purpose of keeping the book value of said properties. In like manner, the cost and book value of any dams, steam plants, or other similar improvements hereafter constructed and turned over to said Board for the purpose of control and management shall be ascertained and allocated. The Board shall, on or before January 1, 1937, file with Congress a statement of its allocation of the value of all such properties turned over to said Board, and which have been completed prior to the end of the preceding fiscal year, and shall thereafter in its annual report to Congress file a statement of its allocation of the value of such properties as have been completed during the preceding fiscal year. For the purpose of accumulating data useful to the Congress in the formulation of legislative policy in matters relating to the generation, transmission, and distribution of electric energy and the production of chemicals necessary to national defense and useful in agriculture, and to the Federal Power Commission and other Federal and State agencies, and to the public, the Board shall keep complete accounts of its costs of generation, transmission, and distribution of electric energy and shall keep a complete account of the total cost of generating and transmission facilities constructed or otherwise acquired by the Corporation, and of producing such chemicals, and a description of the major components of such costs according to such uniform systems of accounting for public utilities as the Federal Power Commission has, and if it have none, then it is empowered and directed to prescribe such uniform system of accounting, together with records of such other physical data and operating statistics of the Authority as may be helpful in determining the actual cost and value of services, and the practices, methods, facilities, equipment, appliances, and standards and sizes, types, location, and geographical and economic integration of plants and systems best suited to promote the public interest, efficiency, and the wider and more economical use of electric energy. Such data shall be reported to the Congress by the Board from time to time, with appropriate analyses and recommendations, and, so far as practicable, shall be made available to the Federal Power Commission and other Federal and State agencies which may be concerned with the administration of legislation relating to the generation, transmission, or distribution of electric energy and chemicals useful to agriculture. It is declared to be the policy of this chapter that, in order, as soon as practicable, to make the power projects self-supporting and self-liquidating, the surplus power shall be sold at rates which, in the opinion of the Board, when applied to the normal capacity of the Authority’s power facilities, will produce gross revenues in excess of the cost of production of said power and in addition to the statement of the cost of power at each power station as required by section 831h of this title, the Board shall file with each annual report, a statement of the total cost of all power generated by it at all power stations during each year, the average cost of such power per kilowatt hour, the rates at which sold, and to whom sold, and copies of all contracts for the sale of power.

Notes & Related Subsidiaries

Editorial Notes

Amendments

1935—Act of Aug. 31, 1935, inserted provision requiring the Board to report to Congress on the allocation of the value of the properties turned over to the Board and paragraph requiring the Board to keep complete accounts on the cost of generation, transmission and distribution of electric energy and production of chemicals necessary to national defense and useful to agriculture and to report to Congress the total cost of all power generated by all power stations and authorized the sale of surplus power.

Statutory Notes and Related Subsidiaries

Transfer of Functions

The Federal Power Commission was terminated, and its functions, personnel, property, funds, etc., were transferred to the Secretary of Energy (except for certain functions which were transferred to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) by section 7151(b), 7171(a), 7172(a), 7291, and 7293 of Title 42, The Public Health and Welfare.

§831m Allocation and Charge of Value and Cost of Plants to Particular Objects; Cost Accounting; Reports of Costs of Operation; Sale of Surplus Power at Profit