We want no such vassalage as divided control of land and water 

 creates. 



PROTECTION OF APPROPRIATORS. 



We need a system which will enable us to more effectively protect 

 the rights of appropriators on small streams; which will prevent the over 

 appropriation and the wrongful diversion and use of their waters. This 

 cannot be done now because the authorities in charge of the public land 

 give no attention whatever to the require mentsof our irrigation system. 

 It accomplishes nothing for the State to refuse "Permits" to appropriate 

 water so long as the United States grants filings along streams which 

 permit of the unrestricted construction of ditches to divert the waters of 

 those streams. Crow Creek is a fair illustration of the results of this 

 system. Eighty ditches have been built to divert its water supply when 

 the stream will not fill one-fourth of that number. Twenty-eight of 

 these ditches have never complied with the provisions of the irrigation 

 law, yet they each year rob those entitled to the use of the water and 

 subject the taxpayers of the county to a heavy expense in the attempt to- 

 regulate them. 



LOCATION OP IRRIGATION WORKS. 



We need a system which will secure the construction of irrigation* 

 works according to some prearranged plan and which will assist in secur- 

 ing the co-operation of the parties constructing them. So long as there 

 is a divided control of land and water all attempts at securing co-opera- 

 tion on the parD of immigrants will be futile. We have already had suffi- 

 cient experience to show that a haphazard and unrestricted diversion of 

 water is not only wasteful and expensive, but in addition it makes the 

 adequate protection of priorities impossible. Yet we are unable to profit 

 by this lesson. The last diversions are of the same character as the first, 

 I have already referred to Crow Creek, one of the first streams utilized. 

 One of the last is the Grey Bull river, the valley of which has beenr 

 largely reclaimed in the past two vears. Under a prearranged plan halt 

 a dozen ditches would have reclaimed the entire area. Instead of these, 

 permits have bee-n issued for fifty individual ditches. Controversies 

 have already arisen between ditch owners. Petitions have already been 

 received for the abandonment of some of these ditches and the transfer 

 of the appropriations to others. The construction of useless ditches 

 involves an enormous waste of water, imposes unnecessary hardship and 

 expense upon the settler, and is laying the foundation for future litigation 

 which is unpleasant to contemplate. The fault for this is not with the 

 people who are endeavoring, under most adverse cond.tions, to reclaim 

 that section. It is with those in authority, in failing to provide an intel- 

 ligent system for such reclamation. If the plans for the ditches from 

 that stream had been prepared beforehand, the settlers occupying those 

 lands would have only too gladly co-operated in their construction, and 

 the result would have been a model irrigation system, which would have 

 cost the settlers less, would have removed all danger of future litigation r 

 lessened the expense of taxpayers for supervision and would have 

 resulted in no possible injury to any individual or interest. 



LAND AND WATER UNDER ONE CONTROL. 



To remedy these defects one condition is absolutely essential, the 



