TPIE IRRIGATION AGE. 



187 



works constructed in districts where the water supply 

 for irrigation is practically nil." The commission gave 

 a number of instances bearing out these conclusions, 

 and, in referring to the reports of Messrs. Gordon and 

 Black, added: "We are sorry to say that the advice of 

 these experts has been practically unheeded, as appar- 

 ently not any of their valuable warnings and recom- 

 mendations have been adopted either by the irrigation 

 trusts concerned, by the department which paid the 

 experts for their reports, or by the governments which 

 advanced the money to construct the vast irrigation 

 works of the colony." 



It is necessary to explain that the rivers in con- 

 nection with which by far the greatest expenditure 

 had been incurred up till the period of the commission 

 were the Murray, the Goulburn and the Loddon. In 

 regard to the last-mentioned river, the report of the 

 commission summed up the position as follows: "Six 

 trusts have been constituted in this district, with a 

 gross area of 274,910 acres. The water available, after 

 making allowance for the demands of riparian owners 

 and the Loddon United Waterworks Trust, and for 

 losses by percolation, is, according to the estimate of 

 the department, only sufficient to irrigate 53,479 acres 

 annually, or about one-fifth of the area comprised within 

 the trust's territories. 222,649 of state money has been 

 advanced to these trusts, and this has been expended 

 in the construction of channels capable of commanding 

 about 217,000 acres. Consequently the great propor- 

 tion of the money advanced has been adsolutely thrown 

 away. The matter does not end here, however, for the 

 six trusts mentioned are debited with 145,000, their 

 share of the cost of the Loddon national works, and are 

 expected to pay 5,800 a year as interest on this liability. 

 The result is that 274,910 acres have been saddled with 

 a liability of 376,649, although, as far as irrigation 

 is concerned, only 53,479 acres can be directly bene- 

 fited by the expenditure." 



Up till the time of the report of the commission 

 in 1896 the amount of loan money expended on irri- 

 gation works in Victoria, including arrears of interest, 

 was $1,801,854. The total area irrigated in the year 

 1895 was only 120,677 acres, and of this area only 

 50,706 acres was under crops, vines and fruits, the 

 balance being merely pasture land, which had been 

 flooded. Thus, for every acre under crop there had 

 been an expenditure of more than 35 10s, or, taking 

 both crops and pasture land, the expenditure amounted 

 to nearly 15 an acre. 



After the issue of the report of the Royal Com- 

 mission, a period of writing off of capital and interest 

 set in. Up till June 30, 1905, the amount of capital 

 thus written off was 724,776, while the amount of 

 interest written off was 323,733. The outstanding 

 arrears of interest at that time amounted to 12,946. 

 The amount expended on irrigation, through the agency 

 of the trusts, was 1,122,087, while that expended by 

 the government direct on the so-called national works 

 was 969,439. Thus the actual outlay on works up 

 till 1905 was 2,091,526, and the extent of the irriga- 

 tion due to this expenditure amounted to only 165,656 

 acres. The figures available do not show the propor- 

 tion of this represented by pasture land; but even if 

 the whole area was under crops, the result was very 

 poor for such a great outlay, the latter being over 12 

 12s for every acre irrigated. This is a miserable record 



compared to what should have been done. There are 

 at least ten of the western states of America in which 

 the area of irrigation is much greater and in some 

 of which it is ten times greater than in Victoria, and 

 in every instance the taxpayer has not been asked for 

 a single dollar of the outlay required. The principle 

 which has been recognized and acted on is that wherever 

 private enterprise is able and willing to carry out irri- 

 gation work it should be afforded every facility for doing 

 so. The magnificent result of this policy has been that 

 last year ten millions of acres were under irrigation 

 in the United States. 



Within the last year great extensions of the irriga- 

 tion works of Victoria have been taken in hand, and, 

 at the same time, the- late minister of water supply, 

 Mr. Swinburne, passed and brought into operation an 

 Act of Parliament which is probably the most compre- 

 hensive measure of its kind in any part of the British 

 dominion. This act places the control of the irrigation 

 trusts, and the whole management of the irrigation 

 works of the state, in charge of three commissioners. 

 For the position of chairman of this commission the 

 Victorian government has had the good fortune to 

 secure the services of Mr. Edward Mead, who resigned 

 from the position of chief of irrigation investigations 

 in the United States to take up that office. But after 

 20 years of such engineering and management as was 

 described and characterized by the Royal Commission, 

 it is very doubtful whether even such an experienced 

 engineer and manager as Mr. Mead will be able to 

 place the irrigation works of Victoria on anything like 

 a satisfactory business footing. Prom the terms of the 

 Water Act referred to, and from the discussion which 

 took place in the Victorian Parliament regarding it, 

 the inference which may fairly be drawn is that from 

 the general taxpayers point of view the irrigation works 

 must be regarded as a permanent and hopeless failure. 

 Waterworks districts are constituted under the act to 

 take the place of the trusts, and a general rate is to 

 be levied on all lands included in these districts for 

 the supply of water for domestic and stock purposes. 

 The following words of the act, relating to this subject, 

 .are of special interest: "Such rate may be made for 

 one year, and shall be of such amount in the pound 

 of the rateable value of such lands as may be necessary 

 to recoup the proportion of interest on cost of works 

 (except such works as are by this act or shall be by 

 some future act of Parliament declared free head 

 works), and of maintenance and management thereof, 

 properly debitable in respect of the service rendered 

 by the works as the commission may determine." In 

 order to make clear the importance of the exemptions 

 here made it is necessary to explain that under the 

 designation of "free head works" are included storage 

 reservoirs, diversion weirs, head works and main canals. 



In addition to the general rate for water supply 

 for domestic and stock purposes the commission is em- 

 powered to levy a special rate for irrigation in any water 

 district after giving notice in the "Gazette" that such 

 district is supplied with water for irrigation. The land 

 may be subdivided into three classes, according to the 

 facilities for distributing the water, and the rate for 

 the land of the highest class is to be one-fifth of the net 

 annual value, according to the valuation made under 

 the direction of the commission. 



