Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 60 Part 1.djvu/363

 PUBLIC LAWS-CH. 516 -JUNE 28, 1946 25U. . C.§386a. Contract require- ments. Availability of stored water. Disposal of uncon- tracted water; basis. Further construc- tion work. Construction of lat- erals. Operation and maintenance assess- ments. Ante, p. 334. designate the Indian lands under private ditches to receive benefits provided for herein. The Indian lands thus designated shall be subject to provisions and conditions of the Act of July 1, 1932 (47 Stat. 564-565). SEC. 6. The contracts entered into between the Secretary of the Interior and an irrigation district or districts, or with non-Indians owning land under private ditches, in pursuance to sections 4 and 5, shall provide that the owners of the lands included in such contracts shall agree to pay annually to the United States for a period of five years beginning November 15 next following the date of approval of this Act, $1 per acre for each irrigable acre covered by such contract or contracts, and shall further agree at the end of such five-year period to pay thereafter their proportionate share of the total reimbursable cost of the construction of the Willow Creek storage works in the sum of $210,726. The Secretary of the Interior shall allow full credit to each landowner for all construction cost repayments applicable to the Willow Creek storage works, made to the United States during such five-year period, and on behalf of all payments made pursuant to the temporary public notice of the Secretary of the Interior issued March 1, 1944. SEC. 7. Water stored in the Willow Creek storage works shall be made available by the Secretary of the Interior only to the following lands on the Little Big Horn River watershed irrigable under irriga- tion works which have been constructed prior to the date of approval of this Act; Indian-owned lands; non-Indian-owned lands within the irrigation districts referred to in section 4; those non-Indian-owned lands covered by contracts entered into pursuant to section 5, subject, however to the authority of the Secretary to dispose of the water as provided for in section 8 hereof. SEC. 8. Pending the execution of contracts with a district or districts, and thereafter, the Secretary of the Interior may, in lieu of disposing of the stored water as prescribed in sections 4, 5, and 6 of this Act, dispose of any uncontracted part of the stored water during any year on an acre-foot basis upon such terms and condi- tions as he shall determine. The Secretary is authorized to fix annual charges to cover the costs of operating and maintaining the storage works and the distribution of the stored water. SEC. 9. No further construction work on the Crow Indian Reser- vation shall be undertaken by the United States without the prior consent of (1) the Crow Tribe, (2) the irrigation district or districts affected, and (3) the Congress of the United States, and without the prior execution of repayment contracts by the non-Indian water users or irrigation district or districts, obligating the non-Indian lands for the payment of their share of such construction costs. The consent of the Crow Tribe shall be obtained by a majority vote of the general council of the tribe expressed at a duly convened meeting: Provided, however, That such consents shall not be necessary to construct laterals necessary to irrigate the lands within the Crow Indian irrigation project as now determined and classified as irrigable by the land designation committee report, as approved by the Sec- retary of the Interior in 1944. SEC. 10. Pursuant to the findings of the report referred to in section 1 (3) the sum of $676,891.83 of operation and maintenance assessments against Indian- and non-Indian-owned lands of the project on the water users' ledger is hereby canceled and the Secretary of the Interior is authorized and directed (1) to credit not to exceed $28,000 on future operation and maintenance assessments against certain lands described in the report; (2) to make refunds not to exceed $3,000 from Crow 336 [60 STAT.

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