OCR Text |
Show West Helped By Bill Signed Washington. President Coolidge ?igned the omnibus water charges bill, hereby providing for a downward readjustment, re-adjustment, to the textent of about 523,000,000, on construction and water marges levied, against nineteen western west-ern reclamation projects. The new law empowers the secretary of the interior in-terior to permanently remove thousands thous-ands of acres of reclamation land from l assessment of construction and water charges, thus reducing by about $16,-000,000 $16,-000,000 the annual charges levied against the districts. It also directs him to classify certain lands as temporarily tem-porarily unproductive and remove charges against them. It is estimated the temporary class of lands will reduce re-duce charges by about $7,000,000 annually. an-nually. The bill was drafted by Chairman Chair-man Smith of the house irrigation committee .to carry out recommendations recommenda-tions of the board of adjustments and surveys appointed by the secretary of the interior. A similar hill was introduced in-troduced in the senate by Senator Phipps, Republican, Colorado. |