324 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



has administrative charge of the appropriation of 

 water. In fact all public agencies in California look 

 on proper irrigation organization under some district 

 plan, in which the owners of land exercise control 

 and in which they possess the sovereign power of 

 taxation for financing the construction, maintenance, 

 and operation of necessary irrigation works, as es- 

 sential to the proper development and prosperity of 

 the State, and therefore worthy of their support. 

 While in some of the newer district enterprises there 

 is still much to be desired in the way of better busi- 

 ness and engineering methods, there are already 

 enough well-managed irrigation districts in the State 

 to demonstrate that irrigators are themselves fully 

 capable of handling very large and very important 

 irrigation systems. There are in California eight 

 successfully operating districts with areas exceeding 

 70,000 acres each, of which four exceed 125,000 

 acres, three exceed 175,000, and one contains over 

 600,000 with 400,000 acres already irrigated. Out 

 of a total of seventy-four districts in existence in 

 March 1921 thirty-six were in active operation early 

 in 1921 and many other newer districts which had 

 recently entered on organization at that date. Some 

 leading facts about those in active operation are given 

 in Appendix K, page 386. 



Irrigation development in California is now defi- 

 nitely reaching the stage when all of the summer 

 flow of even the largest streams is either fully utilized 

 or in process so that the overshadowing effort is now 

 distinctly toward conservation of flood waters for 



