IRRIGATION PRACTICE AND HIGHWAYS 325 



irrigation season use. When this is attained there 

 will result a saving of waste water of which measure- 

 ment estimates would be intelligible only to engineers, 

 but the outcome of it will be at least a doubling of 

 the present irrigated area and coincident with this 

 the making available of hydro-electric power in such 

 vast quantities, especially on the great Colorado, as 

 almost to stagger the imagination. To accomplish all 

 of this, there promises to be such a further perfect- 

 ing of irrigation district legislation and such a co- 

 ordination of water use for irrigation, power, munic- 

 ipal use, and navigation as shall insure the widest 

 possible spreading of the benefits of the water re- 

 sources of the State. For several past decades this 

 has been, as it still is, the goal toward which the 

 various agencies of the national and state govern- 

 ments (the United States Geological Survey and its 

 offspring, the United States Reclamation Service ; the 

 Irrigation Investigations of the United States De- 

 partment of Agriculture; the California State De- 

 partment of Engineering; the California State Wa- 

 ter Commission ; the California State Railroad Com- 

 mission; and the College of Agriculture of the Uni- 

 versity of California) have been or are now working. 

 Recent enactments by the legislature, especially the 

 Water Conservation Act of 1921 and the Santa Clara 

 County Irrigation District Act of the same year, 

 have for their purpose a larger realization of the 

 idea of community control of water through the irri- 

 gation district plan. This is to be accomplished by 

 making it legally practical to join together in single 



