OCR Text |
Show 688 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT market these states would provide for the goods of other sections. All these points were brought out in detail by a 72-page brochure prepared by the Bureau, but nothing was said about the necessity of allowing the settlers to postpone payments year after year. Instead, a table was included showing that of $51,200,059 due on the $491,941,664 of construction costs $50,030,-571 had been paid. The unwary reader would be quite unaware that payments were far behind the schedule though the tardiness had been forgiven by Congress.13S The report of the congressional committee to prepare a more equitable and flexible plan for the repayment of the construction costs of reclamation projects was more realistic. It found that drainage costs not contemplated in the original plans and the replacement of wooden structures by steel and concrete construction had substantially increased the overall costs which water charges had to be made to cover. The delinquent operation and maintenance costs, which the Bureau did not disclose in its report a year later, had further increased the debits against the water users. Interestingly, the committee found the farm units, especially those devoted to general farming, too small. It deplored the wide extent of tenancy which had resulted in careless use of water and mining of the soil, found taxes too high, and recommended that they be assessed on the actual equity of the water user rather than on full land and water value, and that penalties for tax delinquency be reduced. On that old bugbear of the projects, the heavy mortgage indebtedness and interest charges, it had nothing to suggest. Among the numerous recommendations the committee made, perhaps the most im- portant were those calling for reclassifica-tion of the project land, suspension of payments on all lands found to be non-producing, elimination of joint liability of users in the same project, greater flexibility in the assessment of charges, the granting of discounts, postponement of payments, and close cooperation between state and Federal agencies to improve production of agricultural commodities.159 Congress adopted two measures in 1939 to give the desired flexibility in extending the contracts of hard-pressed settlers. The first of these was a straight relief act allowing distressed settlers exemption from payments for water charges for as much as 4 years from 1939 to 1943. The second, called the Reclamation Project Act, to extend their payments, allowed settlers over 40 years in addition to the time the moratorium acts and other relief acts already permitted. New contracts with existing water users could be drawn gearing payments to ability to pay year by year.160 Under these and other extension acts the average contract life for the repayment of construction charges became 50 years, with payments on 12 projects to extend over 50 to 64 years, on six projects over 65 to 79 years, on four projects from 80 to 99 years and on three projects from 100 to 150 years.1"1 A New Day for the West A new day began for the West in 1928 with the decision of Congress to finance the Boulder Canyon Project and build the All American Canal. It ultimately cost more than all the reclamation projects undertaken up to 1929. The shrinking Reclama- 158 "National Irrigation Policy-Its Development and Significance," S. Doc, 76lh Cong., 1st sess., Vol. I, No. 36 (Serial No. 10315), p. 66. 159 H. Doc, 78th Cong., 3d sess., Vol. 2, No. 673 (Serial No. 10265), p. 1938, passim. 160 53 Stat., Part 2, pp. 793, 1187. 161 J. A. Krug and Michael W. Straus. How Reclamation Pays. A Book of Project Repayment Histories and Payout Schedules with History of Crop Production (no date, no place), p. vi. |