OCR Text |
Show 686 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT The Boulder Canyon Project Act was a great step forward in bringing the Federal government to the support of the economic growth of the Southwest and more particularly into salvaging and expanding both public and private irrigation undertakings. It was the first step in a multiple-purpose project to control the Colorado and minimize flood damage, to provide water for expanded irrigation projects in southern California and Arizona, and to provide cheap power to pump water into the Metropolitan District of southern California and for other domestic and industrial purposes. An all-American canal to bring Colorado River water to the Imperial Valley was to be built which would free farmers in the Imperial Valley from their former dependence upon a canal partly through Mexican territory and would permit the irrigation of an additional 200,000 acres. Hitherto, in building dams, the generation of power had been more or less incidental to other objectives but beginning with the adoption of the Boulder Canyon project it was to be the means by which other objectives could be attained. Not that the generation of power had attained full standing with the government, even in the years 1928-32, for there was still some feeling that the government should not engage in the generation or sale of power except incidentally. Consequently, it was decided that the government would build the dam, tunnels, powerhouses, and penstocks but the machinery for generating and distributing the power should be installed and operated by lessees. Since the City of Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Water District of southern California, and a power company were to share the power, they individually were to manage the installation and operation of the generators, which seemed an awkward arrangement, but in this way the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Reclamation avoided the charge of being in the power business. To some officials this seemed essential.153 Plight of the Settlers Meantime, the plight of the settlers on reclamation projects was growing worse, though perhaps no worse than the plight of cotton, wheat, and other single crop farmers, as the agricultural depression of the twenties became accentuated by the general depression beginning in 1929. Despite the liberal extensions of credit, which on one-third of the irrigated land in Federal projects had shifted the payments from annual construction payments to 5 percent of the average crop income, which, at the 1931 rate, would extend repayment over more than 70 years, there was a concerted demand for a moratorium of 3 years. The decline in income of the farmers on Federal irrigation projects showed the dire conditions into which they had fallen. Their annual crop value plummeted from a high of $161,169,880 in 1929 to $119,661,-820 in 1930, $73,960,377 in 1931, and $50,-158,381 in 1932, and not until the Second World War was it to approach and exceed the figure for 1929. Yet the inexorable expansion of irrigated acreage continued, amounting to 24 percent between 1919 and 1940. Mead was upset by the demand for a moratorium, holding that it would compel the cessation of construction work just at the time when every state in the West was urging the adoption of new projects. He believed many settlers could still continue their payments and that it made no sense to grant a general moratorium; the real need of the settlers was not for a moratorium on construction payments but for some reappraisal of the mortgage debts, taxes, and other obligations of the water 153 pirst and Second Annual Report of Operations Under the Boulder Canyon Project Adjustment Act, 1944, p. 4. Kleinsorge, The Boulder Canyon Project has been very useful. |