204 



Till-: IRRIGATION AGE. 



it correctly as to the estimated cost and what we should 

 have to pay, and when and how, etc. He told the 

 meeting that it would be completed within two years, 

 and it was expressly stated that two years did not mean 

 two or three years, but ''within two years." With 

 those assurances the government's proposition was 

 voted to be accepted. 



Then our Water Users' Association wrote an offi- 

 cial letter of inquiry as to details and cost, for pur- 

 pose of having in writing the understanding verbally 

 agreed upon at the meetings, to which Mr. Newell 

 made a prompt reply covering everything very satis- 

 factorily, except as to time of completion, which was 

 never afterwards stated in writing, but his word at 

 the meetings was deemed to be satisfactory. This 

 correspondence was mutually deemed to be a contract 

 or understanding upon which we could rely, and in 

 subscribing our lands to the lien for the payment we 

 thereby bound our lands of record to such lien as a 

 first mortgage. Our confidence in the contract was 

 backed up by reliance on the plain provisions of the 

 Reclamation law,' whereby we were required to return 

 to the Reclamation fund the estimated cost, $3,000,000, 

 or about $35 per acre, 

 and as we had the esti- 

 mate made directly to 

 us, and as such estimate 

 had actually been re- 

 turned to congress as 

 the law provided, we 

 felt perfectly satisfied 

 that we knew what we 

 were doing as a business 

 proposition. 



Now let us look upon 

 the subsequent develop- 

 ment. Work started in 

 fall of 1904. Five years 

 afterwards (Nov. 1909) 

 only Laguma dam was 

 completed at a cost of 

 $3,497,686.40, or nearly 

 half a million over the 

 total estimate. ( See sen- 

 ate committee's report No. 1281, 1911, page 774.) On 

 same page the work is reported as 70 and 1/2 per cent 

 completed. After four more .years work involving an 

 additional expenditure of about $3,000,000, the Recla- 

 mation Record (I think the August, 1913, issue) re- 

 ported the project 64 per cent completed, or a net loss 

 of about 6 per cent in completion. Today, March, 

 1915, the Record shows about 74 per cent completed, 

 and a few weeks ago Director Arthur P. Davis re- 

 ported to the subcommittee of the house on appro- 

 priations, that the revised construction cost as of 

 December, 1914, is $11,715,000. 



December 24, 1912, Mr. Newell made an address 

 in the opera house at Yuma (I was present), in which 

 he stated that "probably no one in the audience would 

 live long enough to see the Yuma project completed," 

 and I guess he was right. 



I now call your attention to Mr. Newell's re- 

 marks found in the second annual report of the Recla- 

 mation Service (a copy of which I examined in the 

 Congressional library in Washington out of print I 

 cannot give you the page), in which he stated that the 

 provision of the law regarding the estimated cost was 



A. 



"91. Q. 

 A. 



A typical irrigation pumping plant at Hereford, Texas. This 

 plant pumps 1,600 gallons of water per minute. It consists of a 

 Bessemer crude oil engine and a Layne turbine centrifugal pump. 

 The cost of irrigating in this district is from 30 to 50 cents per 

 acre for each application of water. 



a very wise pro vision for the reason that it put every 

 thing on a business basis. (I quote this only from 

 memory.) But it serves to show that the law was 

 construed at that time by Mr. Newell himself that the 

 charges must be according to the estimates reported 

 to Congress. That was about 1904 or 1905. 



On Fel). 1, 1909, Mr. Newell promulgated an 

 entirely different doctrine regarding the "estimated 

 cost," in his booklet of "Question? and Ans\vci>." 

 wherein on page 38 we find the following: 



"'JO. Q. How are the charges of the water right 



determined ? 



These are fixed as required by the law, 

 according to the estimated cost of 

 construction of the works. 

 When will the cost of the water right 



be announced? 



The public notice required by Section 

 4 of the act will be issued before 

 water is ready for delivery, and 

 when the work is sufficiently ad- 

 vanced to make an accurate estimate 

 of the cost." 



This astounding in- 

 formation that the esti- 

 mated cost means the 

 total amount that is ex- 

 pended, showed us that 

 we were up against a 

 game of "heads I win, 

 tails you lose." This 

 new construction turns 

 the contract from its 

 original mutual concep- 

 tion into something en- 

 tirely different, and so 

 great was the effect of 

 this new construction 

 that loans were refused 

 and called and that our 

 titles had an absolutely 

 unlimited mortgage on 

 them according to the 

 amount that the engi- 

 neering trust in the government employ could induce 

 the Secretary or Congress to appropriate for them to 

 expend, and all without consultation with us or our 

 consent, nor were we asked to consent and we were 

 politely told that the amount they desired to spend was 

 none of our business, and we were denied access to 

 the books and were treated with utter contempt. Bank- 

 ing credit has ever since been practically withdrawn 

 from us and development of the lands practically 

 ceased as a matter of financial necessity. At the sup- 

 per table with Secretary of the Interior Fisher, at 

 Yuma, our project engineer stated that the Service 

 had now given many of the lands access to irrigating 

 water for which they had been clamoring for years and 

 now the owners did not seem to want it and would 

 not put their lands in cultivation, and only last week 

 we had a letter from our Senator, Mark A. Smith, 

 Chairman of Senate Committee on Irrigation, stating 

 that the Department was complaining very bitterly that 

 we were not putting our lands under cultivation to 

 utilize the water, and alleged that we were holding our 

 lands for speculative purposes. Under the circum- 

 stances of an unknown and unlimited mortgage I don't 



