THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



327 



BLAMES HAPHAZARD U. S. IRRIGATION FINANCE 



By MYRON T. HERRICK, Former Governor of Ohio and Former U. S. Ambassador to France 



Excerpts from an Address Delivered Before the 



International Irrigation Congress, at San 



Francisco, Cal. 



RECLAMATION of land by 

 drainage, embankment, or 

 irrigation in the United States 

 has been going on since 

 George Washington's day:- by 

 private individuals and by the 

 state and national govern- 

 ments. The coastal swamps, 

 the Mississippi Valley, and 

 lastly the arid and semi-arid 

 regions engaged the attention 

 of financiers, engineers., and 

 settlers as population spread 

 over and across the continent. 

 The tillable acreage created or 

 protected is enormous, yet re- 

 sults were not always satisfactory. Less has been 

 done than promised, while methods (especially those 

 of finance) have been so variant and experimental 

 that the record of this kind of work is full of flaws. 



The best chapter of this record is the irrigation 

 projects. Private and public endeavor has done 

 wonders for these during the past generation. 

 Nevertheless, the Secretary of the Interior, speaking 

 of the private enterprises, says: "Few, if any, of 

 the investments have ever returned to the Eastern 

 or European shareholder or bondholder the amount 

 of the original expenditure." As to the government 

 projects he says : "It must be admitted that the 

 slowness of development and the use of reclaimed 

 lands has been a source of disappointment." 



The U. S ' 



Irrigation strawberries with a Lauson pumping plant 

 in the San Joaquin valley of California. 



matter, and all that was nec- 

 essary to do was simply to 

 build reservoirs for impound- 

 ing and main canals for dis- 

 tributing water step by step 

 as the money was received. 



But irrigation turned out 

 to be a yery difficult matter, 

 complicated by serious and 

 unforeseen problems that have 

 upset original plans and esti- 

 mates. Drainage systems had 

 to be constructed in order to 

 prevent lands from becoming 

 water-logged or covered with 

 alkali deposits through seep- 

 age and waste. 



The receipts from the 



sale of public lands amount! to $81,813,772.71, which 

 have now, of course, all disappeared. _ The Act pro- 

 vides that the cost of the construction work shall 

 be assessed against the lands improved and be re- 

 paid by ten annual installments; furthermore, that 

 annual charges shall be made for the water sup- 

 plied and for maintaining the systems. A consider- 

 able percentage of these installments and charges 

 is in default, but all repayments and accruals re- 

 ceived have been thrown into 'the reclamation fund 

 and indiscriminately used with the proceeds from 

 the sale of public lands for development work with- 

 out any regard as to whether it was on old or new 

 projects. The fund was expended as fast as it ac- 

 cumulated. The Service has never had much more 

 cash on hand than was needed for the current year. 



Reclamation Service has undertaken 



twenty-six irrigation projects. Some land is already . Expenses have outrun receipts, and so it was author- 

 irrigated in each of the projects, but most of the ized to make loans amounting to $21,000,000. 



The gross expenditures for construction work 

 amount to $91,644,628.73. With all repayments and 

 various receipts deducted from this, the net invest- 

 ment of the U. S. Government remains at $82,918,- 

 801.83. This investment yields no profit because, 

 under the Act, interest cannot be charged against 

 the land owners. So the true financial situation of 

 the Service can be determined only by taking into 

 account the yearly loss of this interest, the debt it 

 has incurred, the liability it has assumed on uncom- 

 pleted work, and the adverse pressure exerted 

 against it by constant demands of water users for 

 easier terms from the Government. 



Consequently, as the Secretary of the Interior 

 declares: "The resources of the reclamation fund 

 are now overburdened and the projects now under 



settlement lies on sixteen of them. 



Through these irrigation systems the Service 

 diverts a stream greater than the Hudson River at 

 the Mohawk. The estimated area is 2,918,600 acres 

 of which 1,343,193 acres, or 27,115 farms, can now 

 be watered. The investment in capital and labor of 

 the owners of these farms when fully developed will 

 be about $175,000,000, and the value is constantly 

 increasing. One hundred fifty-three towns have 

 sprung up, making the total population 310,514. 



This splendid development, however, has been 

 reached through trials and tribulations largely aris- 

 ing, in my opinion, from faulty methods of finance. 

 The 1902 Act provides that all moneys (except the 

 five per cent set aside for educational purposes) re- 

 ceived from the sale and disposal of public lands in 

 Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Mon- 

 tana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Da- 

 kota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, 

 Washington, and Wyoming, shall be used in irriga- 

 tion projects in those states. What that would 

 amount to each year nobody, of course, could pre- 

 dict. The framers of the Act did not concern them- 

 selves about the possible dangers of this uncertainty, 

 because they thought that irrigation was an easy 



way cannot be completed within a reasonable length 

 of time, unless there shall be large accessions to the 

 fund." 



This is a timely warning. The public lands are 

 being sold off, and receipts from this source will 

 eventually cease. Repayment of expenditures has 

 not been as regular as expected. Moreover, Con- 

 gress in 1914 extended the period of repayment by 

 landowners to twenty years, with the first install- 



