OCR Text |
Show Reclamation Contracts Total 170 Million; Seven Year Fund Asked The reclamation jecord shows that during the past year, the Bureau of Reclamation let 1400 contracts totaling nearly $170,-000,000. $170,-000,000. Every state in the Union except one furnished materials and supplies for reclamation work. About 60 per cent of reclamation's reclama-tion's purchases went to manufacturers manu-facturers in the east, with the remaining re-maining 40 per cent going to western firms. Farmers supplied with reclamation recla-mation water, last year, grew crops valued at $555,000,000, to make the average $122 an acre. Power plants operated by the Bureau of Reclamation sold 15 billion kilowatt-houxs for $26,-000,000. $26,-000,000. In connection-with the information infor-mation showing national benefits bene-fits from reclamation, Secretary of the Interior J. A. Krug has announced the release of the 1948-54 reclamation program report. re-port. It is embraced in a 32 page document in color issued in response res-ponse to a request by Rep. Richard Rich-ard J. Welch of California. Given the green light to spend almost $4,000,000,000 the Bureau Bu-reau of Reclamation, in 7 years, could bring new water to over 5Vz million acres, more than doubling the present irrigable a area. The 7-year expenditure would also produce an additional 4 million kilowatts, nearly trebling treb-ling present Reclamation Bureau power output. Of special interest in the report re-port is a double-page spread illustrating il-lustrating western water resources resour-ces statistics, such as runoff, present pres-ent water use and other fundamental funda-mental over-all data for the 17 western states, and mid-western states. |