WATER 133 



The Bureau of Reclamation under the Department of the 

 Interior was created to carry out this work. Since it was started, 

 it has built 49 irrigation projects. 24 Three of these projects 

 have been abandoned. Fifteen of them have been turned over 

 to the organizations founded by the water users to govern the 

 districts. 25 However, the government has kept its ownership 

 of the dams and main ditches and the Bureau of Reclamation 

 still manages them. Not counting Boulder Dam, the latest of 

 the Reclamation projects, this program has cost the federal 

 government $227,437,000. This cost is about 175 per cent 

 more than Reclamation engineers figured it would be. Since the 

 cost of water on these programs must be borne by the land 

 users, the farmers have had to pay much more than they an" 

 ticipated when they took up this reclaimed land. 



So far, these irrigation projects have not been wholly sue' 

 cessful. The irrigated lands created by the Reclamation Bureau 

 are but 7.6 per cent of the total irrigated land in the country, 26 

 and they are on the whole better off than many of the private 

 and state irrigation projects. Reclaimed lands are not neces 

 sarily the answer to our land problems. There are very definite 

 limits to the value of reclamation, and it is essential to recog' 

 nise those limits. 



Not all irrigation projects have failed. The Salt River irri' 

 gation project in Arizona, for instance, has been quite success 

 ful. There are many reasons for this. In the first place, the cost 

 of water has been kept low, chiefly because the dam which 

 supplies the water, Roosevelt Dam, also supplies electricity to 

 surrounding communities. This sale of electricity has consid 

 erably reduced the cost of irrigation. In addition to this, the 

 farmers have found a market for the products they grow in 

 this area. Finally, most of the original settlers were good 

 farmers who understood how to use the soil properly. 



24 Letter from Bureau of Reclamation, op. cit. 



25 Parkins and Whitaker, op. cit., p. 136. 



26 Ibid., p. 137. 



