1906 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



137 



an lands and private lands may be in- 

 cluded in any drainage project, but in 

 each case the cost of the drainage im- 

 provement is to be borne by the owner 

 of the land, and no settler can have 

 drainage provided for more than 160 

 acres, thus insuring the division of the 

 tracts into small farms which must be 

 actually settled upon and tilled. 



DRAINAGE WORK ALREADY IN PROGRESS. 



This work the Reclamation Service 

 is qualified to do at this very moment. 

 While primarily an engineering bu- 



ject, is rich tule land covered by eight 

 or ten feet of water, and is to be drain- 

 ed and converted into over a thousand 

 farms. The topographic branch of the 

 Geological Survey, of which the Re- 

 clamation Service is also a branch, has 

 already run its lines over many of the 

 great swamp areas of the eastern states 

 and as soon as the Steenerson bill be- 

 comes a law the Geological Survey en- 

 gineers will be ready to launch out into 

 immediate activity in drainage pro- 

 jects. 





tf.&y 





Reclaimed Swamp Lands Produce Splendid Crops 



reau, it has, in all its great irrigation 

 projects, to deal directly with the 

 farmer. It must outline a comprehen- 

 sive drainage system for each irriga- 

 tion project, since there is as much 

 danger from too much irrigation as 

 too little, and to do this the Service 

 has its own farm and soil experts. 

 Some of the irrigation projects have 

 distinctively drainage features ; in fact 

 are almost as much drainage as they 

 are irrigation projects. In the Kla- 

 math Project, 136,000 acres, or more 

 than half of the area of the total pro 



WOULD START WITH A MILLION DOLLARS 



The fund provided by the bill would 

 be small as compared with the irriga- 

 tion fund it would approximate half 

 a million dollars a 'year and would start 

 off with about $1,000,000, the receipts 

 from the sales for the fiscal year 1905 

 being included; but on the other hand 

 the cost of drainage would not be so 

 great as that of irrigation. 



The importance of this work of 

 wholesale drainage, in order to provide 

 homes for increased population, is 



