OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 231 



effective drainage is not a matter which the individual farmer can 

 always provide. In many of the irrigated districts of the West the 

 areas needing drainage are so extensive that these works, whether 

 for removing the water already in the soil or cutting off supplies 

 from the canals and fields above, must be carried out under a com- 

 prehensive plan, which in some cases involved not only farms and 

 communities, but an entire valley. 



This Office has been solicited to study this question, and a begin- 

 ning has been made in this direction. From the nature of the 

 problem, these improvements should be under public direction. In 

 order to properly assist in the formation of plans for drainage of 

 irrigation districts and the framing of laws to govern the organiza- 

 tion of community or district improvements, this study should embrace 

 the experience of the States of the Middle West, where drainage 

 is already an important feature of agriculture and is carried out 

 under State laws as a public improvement. The publication of a 

 bulletin dealing with the operation of State drainage laws and the 

 results which have attended their operation will greatly aid in the 

 framing of laws required for the removal of the surplus waters of 

 many Western irrigated districts. This investigation should also 

 include the cost of manufacture and kind of materials required, 

 because the salts contained in much of the water to be removed will 

 destroy the tiling used elsewhere. Thus far the price of tiling has 

 been so excessive as to be almost prohibitive. That this can be 

 changed by the erection of factories within some districts to be bene- 

 fited is certain. The investigation should show the feasibility of 

 such factories, the places where the material for the manufacture of 

 tiling can be obtained, and the approximate cost of such manufacture. 

 At the present time clay tiling is the cheapest material in some sec- 

 tions, cement in others, and plank in others. The farmers of the 

 West desire to know which they can employ to the best advantage. 



Studies of the methods of irrigation, the duty of water, and the 

 results of seepage and evaporation will be continued as before, the 

 effort being made to encourage the agricultural experiment stations 

 to take up the more scientific and detailed studies of the duty of water 

 and leave to this Department only those larger problems of stream 

 management which have a direct influence on the success of irrigation 

 laws and the efficiency of public supervision in the distribution of 

 the water supply. A number of the Western experiment stations are 

 already paying increasing attention to this, the Montana, Utah, Colo- 

 rado, and Arizona stations being especially conspicuous in this work. 



The growing volume and immense cost of litigation over water rights 

 and the certainty that these complications are destined to continue 

 unless the operation of our irrigation codes is made simpler and more 

 effective, renders it increasingly important that we avail ourselves of 

 the experience of older irrigated countries. The lessons of southern 

 Europe and Egypt should be made use of through visits to these dis- 

 tricts, and the publication of reports showing the. methods employed 

 in the distribution of water, the methods of its application, and the 

 volume required; the kinds of contracts under which water is fur- 

 nished to users; the nature of the ownership of streams and of the 

 canals which distribute them. The beginning of these studies has 

 been unavoidably delayed, but their necessity and the value of the 

 information to those engaged in framing codes of laws, or in enforcing 

 those laws, is believed in more earnestly than when the same subject 

 was referred to in the previous report of this Office. It is hoped that a 

 beginning may be made in this work during the present year. 



