OCR Text |
Show basins while discouraging desirable development in others. Fourth, it invites political pressure from land speculators and business interests who hope to profit from expansion of irrigation. These factors would ultimately militate against the very expansion of irrigation which its advo- cates favor and would tend to limit it to certain regions where great quantities of low-cost power are available. On the other hand, the substi- tution of multipurpose program accounts would provide a sound basis for expansion of irrigation undertakings. With such central accounting for river basin programs, the whole question of Fed- eral contribution to irrigation would take its place with similar contributions to other important pro- gram functions as reflecting the national interest in all such developments. It would be a part of the entire Federal contribution related to the general objectives of national policy. This suggests the possibility of "national re- sources accounts," to do for the Nation what the multipurpose program accounts would do for a particular basin. This would provide a proce- dure which would be easily understood, orderly, and entirely consistent with the comprehensive character of modern basin undertakings. Reimbursement by Private Beneficiaries The formulation of equitable and uniform re- imbursement procedures will require recognition of the different classes of beneficiaries in all types of Federal projects and determination of their respective repayment responsibilities. In general, the aim of policy should be to pre- vent unwarranted gains to a few individuals from public investment. But it must be recognized from the start that identification of beneficiaries, measurement of benefits, and the assessment of those benefits are more difficult in some instances than in others. As for vendible benefits, especially hydroelec- tric power and water supply, full reimbursement can readily be achieved through contracts to sell the service to such distribution agencies as power and water districts, rural electric cooperatives, municipalities, and private utilities, or directly to large industrial consumers. There is a well- established tradition supporting this basis of re- imbursement. In the case of benefits from navigation im- provements, the approach might be equally simple if railroad rates were regulated on a true cost basis. Under such conditions tolls covering a proper allocation of waterway costs or harbor use could properly recapture the value of bene- fits. Large local benefits flow to private interests which control port city real estate and business, as well as to railroads terminating at such ports, and there are important benefits flowing out to the Nation as a whole. No satisfactory or equitable system of charges for inland waterway transportation is possible so long as our national transportation facilities re- main uncoordinated and so long as the railroads are free to meet rates charged by water carriers. Once these basic problems were solved, the way would be open to consider practical measures for instituting appropriate charges against inland waterway transportation based on a reasonable allocation of the joint costs in multiple-purpose water resources developments. Under present conditions, however, the levying of tolls would operate to restrict the growth of inland waterway transportation and to deny the people the po- tential benefits from this form of transport. For reclamation of land through irrigation or drainage, the reimbursement problem becomes more complex, because there is involved a re- gional development factor of great national sig- nificance. Twenty million acres of arid land supplied with water provide new farm lands equivalent to nearly l1/^ times all the farm land in New England, or more than all the cropland harvested in New England and the Middle At- lantic States combined. Thus farmers, tech- nically the primary beneficiaries of large irriga- tion or drainage programs, are also partners in establishing the base for regional and national economic expansion. In the case of irrigation, the problem is further complicated in many areas by the fact that fed- erally financed programs contribute not only to surface water but also to ground water supplies. 80 |