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Show 696 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT the other hand the 160-acre limitation appears to have been ignored in the Salt River Valley of Arizona, at least lor years alter the completion of the Roosevelt Dam.171 Charges and countercharges concerning the efforts of the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Reclamation to apply the excess-lands requirement to the Central Valley led the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs to ask the Secretary of the Interior to make a study of the application of land limitation to water users in Federal projects. We may summarize the results of the study. A decision of the Secretary of the Interior of February 24, 1933, declared that users of Colorado water provided to the Imperial Valley by the Boulder Canyon project and the All American Canal were not subject to land limitation. The report shows that between 1944 and 1960 the number of small farms of 10 to 499 acres in the Imperial Valley had shrunk from 2,748 to 1,029 whereas those of 500 to 999 acres had increased from 119 to 155 and those of 1,000 and more had increased from 65 to 207. There were six holdings of 5,000 to 9,000 acres.172 Beginning in 1938, Congress adopted a series of measures exempting owners of irrigated acreage in excess of 160 or 320 acres from land limitation in the Colorado Big Thompson project in 1938, the Truckee River and Humboldt projects in Nevada and the Owl Creek Missouri River Basin project in Wyoming in 1940, the San Luis project in Colorado in 1952, and the Santa Maria project in California in 1954. By a number of other measures applicable to specific projects some flexibility was granted in determining the size and applicability of land limitation.m It is in California where the battle over the application of the excess-lands provision has been most vigorously fought. Complicating the situation there is the fact that irrigation water from Federal projects in the Valley will recharge the ground level of water and make it possible for non-participating excess-land owners to pump such supplies as they need.174 Notwithstanding clashing interests over power, transmission lines, excess lands, Colorado River water, Columbia River water, the intrusion of construction projects into national parks and monuments and other areas of superlative natural beauty and interest, the appointment of engineers or social scientists as Commissioners of the Bureau of Reclamation, methods of bookkeeping, the use of government funds for "propaganda" favorable to reclamation, and ownership rights of ground water, the reclamation program has gone far to remake and develop the 11 western states. The population of these semi-arid states increased from 1900 to 1960 by nearly 900 percent whereas that of the United States advanced by 133 percent. Twenty-three of the country's 130 largest cities including the 3d, 12th, 18th, and 19th were located in these states. Low-cost electric power for pumping, industrial and domestic purposes and water for industrial, domestic, and irrigation purposes 171 Paul S. Taylor, "The 160-Acre Water Limitation and the Water Resources Commission," Western Political Quarterly, III (September 1950), 439-40. 172 "Acreage Limitation Policy," Committee Print, Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, 1964, pp. 25, 54. 113 Ibid., passim. 174 Literature on the clashing interests in California is extensive, with numerous hearings of congressional committees and extensive periodical literature. For summaries of the earlier and later problem see Mary Montgomery and Marion Clawson, History of Legislation and Policy Formation of the Central Valley Project (Berkeley, 1946), passim; Paul S. Taylor, "Excess Land Law; Secretary's Decision. A Study in Administration of Federal-State Relations." University of California Law Review (January 1962), pp. 1 ff.; Sheridan Downey, They Would Rule the Valley (San Francisco, 1947). |