8 What the NATIONAL FORESTS Mean to the WATER USER 



for example, water-power development in the Western States increased 451 

 per cent, or more than four times as rapidly as in the rest of the country. 

 How rapidly water power is developed in the future will depend solely on 

 how many new industries and people make their home in the West. Judged 

 by how many have gone there in the past, the demands of the Western 

 States upon their "white coal " will continue to multiply. 



No less than 42 per cent of the water power resources of the 1 1 Western 

 States, or approximately 31 per cent of the water-power resources of the 

 entire country, is actually within the National Forests. Moreover, a large 

 part of the remaining power, although developed outside of the Forests, 

 is derived from streams rising in them. In 191 5 nearly 42 per cent of the 

 water power already installed was developed by plants some part of which 

 occupied National Forest lands or which were directly dependent on 

 storage reservoirs constructed on National Forest lands, and 13.6 per cent 

 more was similarly dependent on other public lands. Even these figures, 

 however, do not bring out the full significance of the National Forests in 

 their relation to the water-power resources of the West. A large part of 

 these resources outside of the Forests are so located as to be extremely 

 difficult of development under present conditions, and so a continually 

 increasing proportion of new water-power developments is utilizing sites 

 within National Forests or other public lands. 



Farther downstream, in the lower reaches of the rivers and in the 



harbors into which they flow, water contributes still further to western 



prosperity. Inland water transportation in the Moun- 

 Navigalion . . 



tain and Pacific States will never attain the development 



of which it is capable in the Eastern and Central States, but it is already 



of considerable importance, and should become increasingly so as the 



population grows denser and traffic correspondingly heavier. According 



to the 1916 report of the Chief of Engineers, United States Army, there 



were at that time some 26 navigable streams in the Western States, with 



a navigable length of approximately 1 ,746 miles and an annual movement 



of over 14,000,000 tons valued at more than $250,000,000. 



The relation of the National Forests to navigation is not strikingly 



obvious, since practically all the navigable portions of western streams lie 



outside of the Forest boundaries. Yet by far the greater part of the water 



that they carry originates in their upper courses, which are to a large extent 



