UNTIMELY OPPOSITION. 



FEDERAL STORAGE OF WATERS A REALITY. 



BUT WESTERN DISSENTIONS TEND TO 



KILL THE PROPOSITION. 



BY GUY E. MITCHELL, SEC'Y NATIONAL IRRIGATION ASSOCIATION. 



Opposition has been made to the federal storage proposition on 

 the ground that nothing has yet been accomplished along these lines 

 although efforts have been made for years, and therefore, it is argued, 

 the project might as well be abandoned. Attention has been called to 

 Ex- Governor McCord's statement that Congress last winter came very 

 near to appropriating $215,000, to begin work upon a national system 

 of irrigation for the arid West, and that the leaders agreed with 

 Senators Warren and Carter that at least that sum should be appro- 

 priated by the present Congress, if they would then consent to let the 

 matter go over. Therein, it is stated, is the measure of what can be 

 expected for federal irrigation construction by the present Congress. 

 Two hundred odd thousand dollars apportioned among the arid states 

 and territories would make a sum for each so paltry as to amount to 

 naught, and the citizen of today would have to live to be a hundred 

 before he could see any appreciable results from government irrigation 

 development. 



This entire position is certainly erroneous and misleading. The 

 small appropriation asked last year was not intended to be apportioned 

 among the States interested in irrigation. It was for the express 

 purpose of building one or two storage reservoirs. This was to be the 

 beginning of a policy which should include the complete survey of all 

 the arid region and the building of storage reservoirs by direct and 

 continuing appropriations from Congress to Congress, in every arid 

 State and Territory. Rome was not built in a day, and western legis- 

 lators did not expect Congress to build at once a hundred storage 

 reservoirs, but this appropriation would have been a beginning. As 

 Senator Carter said "Let it be distinctly understood that this is the 

 entering wedge of a new policy, etc." It is not expected of the present 

 Congress that it will by any favorable possibility make an appropria- 

 tion of 8100,000,000, or even enough money to build a single reservoir 

 in each arid State, but if it appropriates funds for one reservoir and 

 for complete surveys in other States, the hopes of the people who 

 have been arguing federal storage will be realized. This would be 

 the entering wedge and nothing could prevent its widening and broad- 

 ening the opening. Wyoming is not going to have a reservoir built 



