THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



207 



THE PROOF OF THE "SERVICE" PUDDING. 



The Carlsbad (N. M.) Project Investigation Brings Startling Reclamation Service Revelations 



OFFICIALS of the 

 Reclamation Serv- 

 ice, serving as members 

 of the Board for Revalu- 

 ation and Review of costs 

 on the Federal Irrigation 

 projects, openly favor 

 star chamber hearings by 

 these boards. 



The Reclamation 

 Service is inclined, if it 



can get away with it, to rest its case on a very general 

 statement of project costs, styled "Statement giving by 

 features the amount of expenditures, subdivided into 

 elements of costs." 



Overhead charges on the projects, when finally 

 dug out by the representatives of the settlers, are much 

 greater than has been charged frequently by the set- 

 tlers and by the IRRIGATION AGE. 



These facts were developed very 

 fully at the hearing on the Carlsbad, 

 N. M., project hearing. They also have 

 cropped out in practically every other 

 hearing which has been held or is now 

 in progress. On some of the projects, 

 Reclamation Service influence has suc- 

 ceeded in making the hearings practi- 

 cally star chamber affairs. 



Open hearings were held on the 

 Carlsbad project, but only after Prof. 

 T. U. Taylor, of Austin, Texas, the 

 third member of the board, had joined 

 with Scott Etter, of Carlsbad, N. M., 

 representing the water users, in insist- 

 ing upon an open hearing. D. W. Mur- 

 phy, representative of the Reclamation 

 Service, was quite insistent that the only 

 work before the board was an examina- 

 tion of the project accounts and that any witnesses, 

 who might be heard, should be heard in secret. 



"We don't do things that way in Texas," is the 

 reported reply of Prof. Taylor, who is dean of engi- 

 neering at the University of Texas. 



The establishment of the open hearing precedent 

 should prove of great value to those projects on which 

 the revaluations and costs reviews are not yet com- 

 pleted. 



From the settler's standpoint, the Carlsbad hear- 

 ing was probably the most complete and thorough yet 

 held. Fulton H. Sears, lawyer, a settler on the 

 Tmckee-Carson project in Nevada, member of the 

 Executive Committee of the National Federation of 

 Water Users' Associations, and one of the closest stu- 

 dents m the United States of Reclamation Service af- 

 fairs, was retained as counsel for the Carlsbad asso- 

 ciation. Mr. Sears is an able attorney and he probed 

 to the very bottom of the project affairs. His results 

 were startling. 



The Carlsbad Board of Review, Reading From the Left D. W. 

 Murphy, Drainage Engineer of the Reclamation Service; Prof. T. U. 

 Taylor of Austin, Texas; Scott Etter of Carlsbad, N. M. 



Fulton H. Sears of Fallen, Nev., 

 Who Acted as Attorney for the 

 Carlsbad Water Users. 



The association also 

 engaged T. J. Guilfoil, a 

 public accountant of Al- 

 buquerque, N. M., who is 

 also secretary of the 

 Democratic State Central 

 Committee of New Mex- 

 ico. Mr. Guilfoil made as 

 thorough an audit of the 

 project books as was pos- 

 sible from the rather un- 

 systematic records kept by the Reclamation Service of- 

 ficials, and his discoveries were of much value to Mr. 

 Sears in establishing his case for the water users. 



The Reclamation Service statement showed the 

 cost of the project up to Dec. 31, 1914, to be $933,- 

 840.%. The water right cost as now fixed by the 

 Reclamation Service is $55 per acre, or a total esti- 

 mated cost of $1,100,000. The original 

 estimates, on which many of the farm- 

 ers accepted government contracts was 

 $31 per acre or a total cost of $620,000 

 for the project. 



"I maintain that all above the 

 original estimated cost of $31 per acre 

 is waste," said Mr. Sears after he had 

 completed his case before the Review 

 Board. "The difference of $480,000 

 represents money spent for inefficiency." 

 The hearing developed that the 

 books of the project are in a chaotic 

 condition, vouchers for thousands of 

 dollars are missing and freight bills for 

 vast amounts are also gone. Innumer- 

 able examples of engineering misman- 

 agement were uncovered. No field 

 notes or other engineering data from 

 which to compute quantities and costs 

 were found and so far as the Reclamation Service en- 

 gineers, now on the project know, none were available. 

 Although the overhead charges were generally 

 very carefully concealed in the other cost features, one 

 estimate placed these charges at 40 per cent of the 

 total cost of the project. 



The books of the project balanced, no actual evi- 

 dence of graft was uncovered but wastage stared the 

 board in the face whenever they started down a new 

 path. 



From the very beginning of the hearing, the 

 Reclamation Service officials assumed the attitude of 

 not disclosing any facts, except such as could be drawn 

 from hostile witnesseses. 



The case developed by Mr. Sears is exceedingly 

 interesting not only to water users but also to all who 

 have followed the workings of the Reclamation Serv- 

 ice. Through Mr. Guilfoil, the water users' account- 

 ant, Mr. Sears showed that the books and records of 

 the project for the first two years, during which the 

 Reclamation Service handled it, are not a current set 

 of books, but instead are a set of records written up 



