14 



tion of electrical power, and for telephone and telegraph purposes, and for 

 canals, ditches, pipes and pipe lines, flumes, tunnels, or other water conduits, 

 and for water plants, dams, and reservoirs used to promote irrigation or 

 mining or quarrying, or the manufacturing or cutting of timber and lumber, 

 or the supplying of water for domestic, public, or any other beneficial uses 

 to the extent of the ground occupied by such canals, ditches, flumes, tunnels, 

 reservoirs, or other water conduits or water plants, or electrical or other 

 works permitted hereunder, and not to exceed fifty feet on each side of the 

 marginal limits thereof, or not to exceed fifty feet on each side of the center 

 line of such pipes and pipe lines, electrical, telegraph, and telephone lines 

 and poles, by any citizen, association, or corporation of the United States, 

 where it is intended by such to exercise the use permitted hereunder of any 

 one or more of the purposes herein named : Provided, That such permits 

 shall be allowed within or through any of said parks or any forest, military, 

 Indian, or other reservation only upon the approval of the chief officer of 

 the Department under whose supervision such park or reservation falls and 

 upon a finding by him that the same is not incompatible with the public 

 interest : Provided further, That all permits given hereunder for telegraph and 

 telephone purposes shall be subject to the provisions of title sixty-five of the 

 Revised Statutes of the United States, and amendments thereto, regulating 

 rights of way for telegraph companies over the public domain : And pro- 

 vided further, That any permission given by the Secretary of the Interior 

 under the provisions of this act may be revoked by him or his successor in 

 his discretion, and shall not be held to confer any right, or easement, or 

 interest in, to, or over any public land, reservation, or park. 



By section 1 of the act approved February 1, 1905 (33 Stats., 628), it is pro- 

 vided that 



The Secretary of the Department of Agriculture shall, from and after the 

 passage of this act, execute or cause to ~be executed all laws affecting public 

 lands heretofore or hereafter reserved under the provisions of section 

 twenty-four of the act entitled "An act to repeal the timber-culture laws, 

 and for other purposes, approved March third, eighteen hundred and ninety- 

 one, and acts supplemental to and amendatory thereof, after such lands 

 have been so reserved, excepting such laws as affect the surveying, pros- 

 pecting, locating, appropriating, entering, relinquishing, reconveying, certi- 

 fying, or patenting of any of such lands." 



Section 5 of the same act is as follows : 



That all money received from the sale of any products or the use of any 

 land or resources of said forest reserves shall be covered into the Treasury 

 of the United States, and for a period of five years from the passage of this 

 act shall constitute a special fund, available until expended as the Secretary 

 of Agriculture may direct for the protection, administration, improvement, 

 and extension of Federal forest reserves. 



It appears to me that in so far as the questions relevant to your inquiry are 

 questions of law they have been determined by the opinion of my predecessor, 

 furnished to you on May 31, 1905. (25 Op., 470.) In that opinion Attorney- 

 General Moody says: 



Under the act of 1897 you are simply directed to so regulate the occupancy 

 and use of these reservations as to insure the objects thereof and preserve 

 the forests thereon from destruction. The act contains nothing inconsistent 

 with the making of a reasonable charge on account of the use of the 

 reserves under the permit granted by you. By the act of 1905 you are to 

 cover into the Treasury money received from the " use of any land or 

 resources " of the reservations, which " shall constitute a special fund 

 * * * f or the protection, administration, improvement, and extension of 

 the Federal forest reserves." Any sums of money realized in this connection 

 would thus tend to preserve the forests and insure the objects of reserva- 

 tions, and it might therefore be contended that Congress in authorizing you 

 to regulate their use and occupation considered the incidental question of 

 charging for their use a proper subject to be left to your judgment and 

 discretion. That such was the Congressional intent finds support in the 

 fact that services somewhat analogous to compensation have been required 

 for several years without any indication of a disapproval thereof on the 

 part of Congress. 



