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Show RECLAMATION OF THE ARID LANDS 085 added by the construction of irrigation works, but often the value that the settler himself would have to add by patient husbandry over the years. The first homesteader, said Warne, had not uncommonly been a speculator who had no intention of developing the land, who filed his entry, and within a short time sold a relinquish-ment at as high as $100 an acre. By 1913 the average price of unimproved land within projects had increased by 759 percent and reached as high as 5,400 percent in the Yakima project in Washington and 5,000 percent in the Shoshone project in Wyoming. This was in comparison with an average increase of all farmland in the irrigation states of only 110 percent. More careful selection of entrymen filing for homesteads and legislation resulting from the Fact Finders' report requiring the excess-land owners either to sell or agree to sell their surplus lands at the appraised price "functioned successfully on later projects and have prevented speculation," said Warne.1" Hydro-Electric Power, Adjunct of Irrigation Before the new projects could be brought to completion and the firmly stated policy toward excess lands could be tried out, proposals for a far greater project on the Lower Colorado were attracting attention. Carrying silt that in a year was equal to the amount of soil excavated in building the Panama Canal, the Colorado had proved difficult to contain by levees. It had broken through every barrier raised by man because the silt raised the level of the river and enabled its floodwaters to seek an outlet in the low-lying Imperial Valley, where they did great damage. The only solution seemed to be a high level dam in Boulder Canyon to withhold the floodwaters, which could at the same time harness them for the generation of power and supply both irrigation and potable water to the burgeoning communities of southern California and to potentially rich land in both California and Arizona. The enormous amount of power that could be generated, and for which there was a rapidly growing demand, plus income from the sale of water to municipalities and irrigation districts, promised a certain return that would cover the full cost except for that portion allocated for flood protection. Controlling the turbulent Colorado had been under consideration for a generation but the issue came to a head in the twenties when six of the seven states deeply concerned about the use of Colorado water entered into a compact for the allocation of the water and the power. Arizona's Representatives and Senators were up in arms against the measure because it did not assure that state a satisfactory allocation of water and power or compensation for the loss of taxable resources. Senator Henry F. Ashurst conducted a sustained and successful filibuster in the 1st session of the 70th Congress that prevented action but in the 2d session support for the measure was so overwhelming that opponents let it come to a vote. It passed the Senate by a vote of 65-11 on December 14 and the House on December 18, 1928, by 167-122.15- 151 Reclamation Era, XXIII (August 1947), 176 ff. 152 Cong. Record, 70th Cong., 2d sess., 277-98, 314-23, 603, 837. Congressional discussion of the Boulder Canyon dam proposal reached a high point in 1928, the year of the St. Francis Dam catastrophe in California involving the loss of more than 400 lives and millions of dollars of property. Senator Ashurst and others used this catastrophe to frighten people into thinking that the building of a dam far larger and holding back 1,000 times more water on no better foundation than that of the St. Francis Dam was a terribly dangerous undertaking. For the St. Francis disaster see Charles F. Outland, Man-Made Disaster. The Story of the St. Francis Dam (Glendale, Calif., 1963). Paul L. Kleinsorge, The Boulder Canyon Project (Palo Alto, Calif., 1941), p. 269. |