THti JRR1GAT10N AGE. 



113 



SUMMARY, CAPACITIES AND COST. 



According to these estimates the average cost of peparing to 

 store an acre foot of water will approximate two dollars and fifty 

 cents. Every acre foot stored of that which now runs to waste will 

 add an acre to the area of land which can be cultivated and change its 

 selling and productive value from grazing to farming land. The sig- 

 nificant feature about this is that two dollars and fifty cents covers 

 the entire outlay required. The ditches now built will serve to distrib- 

 ute the increased supply and the expense of looking after the reser- 

 voirs will in part be met by the lessened outlay now required to pay 

 the water commissioner for his services in closing headgates in time 

 of scarcity. 



PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE OWNERSHIP. 



With such returns in sight why have not these works been built ? 

 The reasons are apparent and conclusive. 



In the first place, those who need them most have not the money 

 to build them. They are the holders of late priorities, the cultivators 

 of the farms first cut off from the stream when it runs low. Because 

 of this, their lands have the least value and they are least able to in- 

 cur the outlay. 



All these basins except Lake De Smet discharge into the main 

 stream and every appropriate!' below would have a chance to absorb a 

 part of the stored supply. Parties undertaking to build these reser- 

 voirs as a_n investment would not, therefore, be able to reap any re- 

 turn from their outlay unless some plan can be devised for the public- 

 control of the water after it is turned into the stream and its distribu- 

 tion among those entitled to it and those only All efforts so far to 

 enlist irrigators in the valley in this work as a community enterprise 

 have failed. Many are so situated that they believe if the reservoirs 

 are built and the water turned into the stream they can steal enough 

 to irrigate their lands and, hence, do not propose to contribute any- 

 thing, and the experience of those who have built ditches to turn the 

 water of Piney Creek into the snlaller streams shows that it is impos- 

 sible without a material increase in the supervision exercised by the 

 state to prevent this being done. A study of the irrigation map of 

 this region shows how the priorities are intermingled and how the 

 ditches built ramify not only in one drainage basin but in half a dozen. 



If this water is stored by private investors and disposed of to only 



