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Show 728 INTERSTATE ADJUDICATIONS The river basin in Colorado and Wyoming is arid, irrigation being generally indispensable to agriculture. Western Nebraska is partly arid and partly semi-arid. Irrigation is indispensable to the kind of agriculture established there. Middle Nebraska is sub-humid. Some crops can be raised without irrigation. But the lack of irrigation would seriously limit diversification. Eastern Nebraska, beginning at Grand Island, is sufficiently humid so as not to justify irrigation. Irrigation in the river basin began about 1865, when some projects were started in eastern Wyoming and western Nebraska. Between 1880 and 1890 irrigation began on a large scale. Until 1909 storage of water was negligible, irrigation being effected by direct diversions and use. Prior to 1909 the development in Colorado and Wyoming was relatively more rapid than in Nebraska. Since 1910 the acreage under irrigation in Colorado increased about 14 per cent, that of Wyoming 31 per cent, and that of Nebraska about 100 per cent.4 The large increase in Nebraska is mainly attributable to the use of storage water from the Pathfinder Reservoir.5 The Pathfinder Reservoir is part of the "North Platte Project" which followed the adoption by Congress in 1902 of the Reclamation Act. 32 Stat. 388. Pathfinder was completed in 1913. It has a capacity of 1,045,000 acre feet, which is 79 per cent of the average annual run-off of the North Platte River at that point. This project includes an auxiliary channel reservoir called Guernsey, located above Whalen, Wyoming. Its capacity is 50,870 acre feet. The project also includes two small reservoirs in Nebraska-Lake Alice and Lake Minatare- having a capacity of 11,400 and 67,000 acre feet, respectively. There are two main supply canals-Interstate and Fort Laramie-which take out from the North Platte at the Whalen diversion dam. The Interstate canal runs on the north side and the Fort Laramie on the south side of the river. Both extend far into Nebraska. North- port-a third canal-is located wholly in Nebraska. These canals and their laterals extend over 1,600 miles. The project also includes a drainage system and two hydroelectric power plants. The United States contracted with landowners or irrigation districts for use of the w^ater-selling it, as contemplated by the Reclamation Act, so as to recoup the cost of the project which was about $19,000,000. It also entered into so-called Warren Act contracts pursuant to the Act known by that name (36 Stat. 925) which authorized the Secretary of the Interior to contract for the storage and delivery of any surplus water conserved by any reclamation project in excess of the require- ments of the project. Colorado Wyoming Nebraska* Total 1880 200 11,000 11,200 1890............ . .. 44,500 86,000 15,300 145,800 1900 83 500 169,100 105,690 358, 290 1910........... . . 113,500 224,500 192,150 530,150 1920 129 140 265,375 307,105 306,930 371,300 701,445 808,945 1930______......... ..... . 130,540 1939 131 810 325,720 383,355 840,885 * Not including about 65,000 acres now irrigated from the Platte River between North Platte and Kearney, Nebr. 8 Of the 174,650 acre increase since 1910,104,000 acres are North Platte Project lands. |