Short Circuit

Last week's skirmish in the battle over the Dixon-Yates power plant at West Memphis, Ark. was fought on Capitol Hill. In closed session, the Democrat-dominated House Appropriations Committee cut out of the 1956 federal budget a $6,500,000 item for a Dixon-Yates transmission line. The line would pick up Dixon-Yates power at the middle of the Mississippi River and feed it into the TVA system at Memphis, for retransmission to the Atomic Energy Commission. Instead, the House Committee voted that the money should be spent to start a $90 million TVA steam-generating plant at Fulton, Tenn., which would fill AEC's extra need for power.

Opponents of Dixon-Yates were gleeful. Said Missouri's Democratic Representative Clarence Cannon, Appropriations chairman: "This kills the Dixon-Yates deal because it doesn't give them an outlet for their power."

But Dixon-Yates is far from dead: the committee's action was no more than a political short circuit. Though the House may go along with the committee, the TVA budget still has to get through the Senate. There, conservative Democrats may well team up with Republicans to restore the Dixon-Yates line and kill off TVA's proposed plant at Fulton.

Even if Congress turns down the transmission line this year, construction of the Dixon-Yates project will go ahead. There is no need for the line until 1957, when the plant goes into production. By then, Congress might change its mind; if it does not, Dixon-Yates could build the line itself. Said Edgar H. Dixon, whose Middle South Utilities holds 79% of the Dixon-Yates stock: "We have not the remotest thought of turning back."

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