43 U.S.C. § 390ll — Corps of Engineers projects

(a) Applicability of Federal reclamation laws: No matter what any other law says, the ownership limits, pricing limits, and other rules of federal reclamation law — including this subchapter — do not apply to land that benefits from water projects the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built. There are two exceptions: (1) a federal statute has expressly made the project part of, or merged it with, a federal reclamation project; or (2) the Secretary, using reclamation-law authority, has provided the works that control or deliver the farm water supply for that land. (b) Payment of construction, operation, maintenance and administrative costs allocated to conservation or irrigation storage: Even with subsection (a), water users must still keep their contract obligations to the Secretary. They must repay their share of construction costs, and pay their share of operation, maintenance, and administrative costs, for the parts of a Corps of Engineers project that are assigned to conservation storage or irrigation storage.