OCR Text |
Show tion was organized by railroad officials, manufac- turers, businessmen, and others interested in the development of irrigation. This group later be- came the National Reclamation Association. At its Chicago meeting in 1900, it urged the Gov- ernment to acquire full title and jurisdiction to any reservoir sites which it might improve, and full water rights to the water needed to fill them. When President Theodore Roosevelt took office in 1901, his first major task was the estab- lishment of a national program for the conserva- tion of the land and water resources of the West. The fundamental principles he advanced in his message to Congress formed the basis for the Reclamation Act of 1902. A significant passage from his address said: It is as right for the National Government to make the streams and rivers of the arid regions useful by engineering works for water storage as to make useful the rivers and harbors of the humid regions by engineering works of another kind. * * * Our people as a whole will profit, for successful homemaking is but another name for upbuilding of the Nation. Reclamation Act The Reclamation Act established a "reclama- tion fund," derived from the sale of public land in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Da- kota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. This was to be a revolving fund with which the Gov- ernment would build irrigation works and deliver water to a settler's land. The amount of land for which an owner could obtain water was limited to 160 acres, and the owner was required to live in the neighborhood of the land. The settler was to repay his apportioned share of the estimated cost of the project in not more than 10 yearly payments. It was soon discovered, however, that a longer period was needed to get the "wildness" out of raw land and to make it produce new crops. Accordingly, in 1914 the repayment period was extended to 20 years, and in 1926 to 40 years. In 1939 the Secretary of the Interior was author- ized to fix, in connection with certain areas within a project, development periods up to 10 years, exclusive of the 40-year maximum repayment period, during which the land might be improved and the farms equipped. The fundamental interest of Congress in ex- panding irrigated land has been manifested again and again. Due to a decline in receipts from public lands and small repayments by settlers, only one new project was constructed between 1907 and 1920. Congress therefore passed the Mineral Oil Leasing Act of 1920, which pro- vided that 52.5 percent of oil royalties derived from public land and leases should be paid into the reclamation fund. When income from this source began to diminish, due to oil con- servation policies, Congress passed the Hayden- O'Mahoney amendment to the 1939 depart- mental appropriation bill, which covered into the reclamation fund 52.5 percent of all receipts, in- cluding penalties, received by the Treasury from land within the naval oil reserves between 1920 and 1938. This Hayden-O'Mahoney amendment also in- cluded the following provision: All moneys received by the United States in con- nection with any irrigation projects, including the incidental power features thereof, constructed by the Secretary of the Interior through the Bureau of Reclamation, and financed in whole or in part with moneys heretofore or hereafter appropriated or allocated therefor by the Federal Government, shall be covered into the reclamation fund, except in cases where provision has been made by law or contract for the use of such revenues for the benefit of users of water from such project: * * * Meanwhile, the idea of multiple-purpose proj- ects had begun to take shape, offering the possibil- ity of large power revenues to assist the settler in repaying the cost of the project. Although the Bureau started building power plants with the construction of a 1,000-kilowatt plant com- pleted in 1909 at Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River, Ariz., it was not until the late 1920's that power became a big factor and the Bureau of Reclamation was launched on multiple-purpose undertakings. Today, the Bureau has 20 power 911609-5C -13 151 |