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Show THE WESTERN WEB 35 One of the best analyses of the Reclamation Bureau's proposed 9-e Contract was written by Senator Downey. While Downey had been writing chiefly about conditions in the Central Valley of California, his findings were applicable to any western project under the jurisdiction of reclamation laws. Downey listed four main objections to the contract: 1 - It provided for the separation of the water rights from the lands which they served. 2 - It failed to credit an irrigation district with any payments toward the costs of a project. 3 - The contract would run for forty years, but it contained no assurance that after steady payment for that period by an irrigation district, the Bureau would sign a new contract, or that the old one would be ex- tended. The persons who had paid for the project might well lose it, for they had no permanent water right. The Bureau might choose to sign a contract with someone else. 4 - It reserved to the Secretary of the Interior title to a district's irrigation system, and granted him au- thority to seize, take over and operate such irrigation works whenever in his opinion they were not being operated according to contract. Downey, a lawyer, charged that under the contract the agents of Reclamation Commissioner Straus could go into irrigation areas and give orders to farmers, who would be helpless to defy them. The farmers would obey the Bureau or they would get no water. The Com- missioner of Reclamation would have the power to tell a farmer what to grow, and how to grow it. He would have the authority to set a value on privately owned land, to order it sold at a certain figure, and to prevent |