History of public land law development

page 670

670 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT Recognizing its responsibility for their plight, officials of the Department of the interior and the House Committee on the Arid Lands agreed upon a bill whose main purpose was to extend the water payments for construction costs from 10 to 20 years, still without any interest, and to allow even greater flexibility in the amount of the annual payments during the first years. The Extension Act During the discussion in the House of Representatives of the relief bill, which came to be known as the Extension Act, Frank W. Mondell of Wyoming summarized the progress, or lack of progress as some would say, in the reclamation program. After an expenditure of $83,342,542, water was ready to irrigate 1,261,000 acres but only 886,867 acres were expected to be irrigated. On these lands there were 11,320 purchasers of water, but 1,263 persons had pre-existing rights to water antedating the coming of the Reclamation Service; 7,107 water users were on private land and 4,213 on public lands. The price paid for water (construction cost) ranged from $10 to $110 an acre, in addition to the cost of maintenance. Only 2 percent of the constructions costs had been paid despite the fact no new project had been undertaken for years and most of those underway should have reached completion or been near to it. To complete the 25 projects (some had been abandoned) called for an additional expenditure of $67 million. Arrears on construction and maintenance charges were $4,770,000.w3 Western Representatives placed emphasis on the plight of the settlers who, at least partly through the fault of the government and at its invitation, had been attracted to land whose costly water charges they could not pay with all their other obligations and who, as Senator Reed Smoot said, would be ruined if extension was not granted.104 The need of these homesteaders for relief was irresistible, though some hardened Representatives from other sections could see no more reason to aid farmers on irrigated land in Idaho than hard-pressed grain farmers in Indiana or Missouri. One speaker said there was a good deal of farmland back east that could be bought for less than the water charges on these irrigated lands and wondered about the wisdom of subsidizing this new type of farming so generously.10'"1 Evidence was presented to show that settlers had been encouraged to move on to dry land for which there was no water, or where water came very late, or where there was not enough, or where it drowned out much land and made it useless.10" Westerners won a major victory, when they defeated by 140-81 an effort to require interest to be charged on all outstanding water obligations.107 Before the long discussion in the House of Representatives was over, Oscar Underwood of Alabama, a supporter of extension, introduced an amendment which, after July 1, 1915, would require that appropriations from the Reclamation Fund be voted by Congress instead of allowing the fund to be allocated by the Secretary of the Interior. Though both Houses had long since insisted on leaving little control over the allocation of funds to administrative agencies and had stripped from the Forest Service discretion in the use of funds from grazing fees and the sale of timber, western Senators and Representatives fought hard to retain in Interior full responsibility for the Reclamation Fund, 103 Cong. Record, 63d Cong., 2d sess., pp. 12225-32. 104 Ibid., pp. 12959, 13360. 10iIbid., pp. 12250, 12501, 13012. All efforts of opponents of Federal reclamation to require interest on all outstanding water charges were defeated, the last being defeated in the House by a vote of 140-81. 106 Ibid., pp. 12974, 13010. "»Ibid., p. 13012.