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Show RECLAMATION OF THE ARID LANDS 689 tion Fund of course had to be supplemented by special appropriations for Hoover Dam at Boulder. Further extension of reclamation work was made possible by the decision ot President Roosevelt to use Relict and Public Works Administration funds for that purpose. An allotment in 1934 of .$103,535,000 was made for the continuation of existing projects and for new ones. Among the new projects were the Caspar-Alcova development on the North Platte in Wyoming and the Grand Coulee project which was expected to provide water for the irrigation of more than a million acres at a cost of S394 million.10-' In 1935 the people of California persuaded the Bureau of Reclamation and the Public Works Administration to undertake the Central Valley project. By 1937 the Commissioner could say that since 1933, $22() million had been made available for construction, $68 million of which had been directly appropriated by Congress out of general Treasury funds and the balance had been allotted from emergency funds. Much larger commitments, however, had been made. The Central Valley project of California involved the building of one or more dams on the Upper Sacramento and its tributaries to store the surplus water that river had in abundance and the building of canals and pumps to conduct that surplus to the San Joaquin Valley where it was estimated a million or more acres could be made highly productive. Another dam (the Friant) was to be built on the Upper San Joaquin to provide control for distribution purposes. Dams, power plants, canals were 162 Secretary of the Interior, Annual Report, 1934, pp. 24 ff. Income from public land sales flowing into the Reclamation Fund reached a low point of $154,567 in 1936, and the moratorium on the payment of construction costs by project settlers had sharply reduced income from that source. Report, 1936, p. 53. estimated to cost $170 million. Long contemplated by the State of California, the project had gotten nowhere because of that state's inability to finance such a large program. When public works and other emergency funds became available for reclamation projects in 1933, the people of the state turned to Washington for the funds, hopeful that the project could remain under the control of the state and subject to its law. California would have preferred a grant from the Public Works Administration. It did not seek a Reconstruction Finance Corporation loan because the 4 percent interest charge on the loan would have been too heavy a burden on the water users. If the project had been constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers it would have been free of the excess-lands provision of the Newlands Act, but the emphasis might then have been upon flood control rather than water for irrigation. Only the Bureau of Reclamation would undertake an integrated, interest-free program that would conserve water for irrigation, prevent floods, guard against the intrusion of salt water into delta lands and at the same time provide large hydro-electric projects that would mean both cheap power for pumping water and revenue that would cover a considerable part of the cost of construction, thereby reducing the burden on water users. Failing in their quest for a Public Works grant, Californians turned wholeheartedly to the Bureau of Reclamation and accepted all its conditions, including the excess-lands provision. Mead was still Commissioner of the Bureau, had frequently reiterated his position concerning the harmful effects of the high land prices at which "speculators" (as he persisted in calling all those who had anticipated settlers in acquiring land within the projects) had sold their tracts to farm makers, and tried to make sure that on future developments land prices would be controlled. He seemed to mean that he intended to en- |