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Show 5 (iter - Feast Or Famine In The jjji Lands Of The Western States L Reclamation . tojects Their Way? J6 , such a common com- of us don't think ? 'f It's like the air we ' always there when we S ;t (he arid reaches of the in -: of the United States, Is neither so common, nor S vs available. 5 "it rains in many places : -"united States, the down- ' mere inconvenience. But : 15 country, rain is never : venience; when it comes, : of God's greatests bless- times rain goes beyond a sometimes it comes all ;fih and then the rivulets ! ;,to bank-high streams, and ; , vers turn into raging tor- ; once-dry rivers transform : ! iVes into frightening, ang- "'es of relentless water, and many miles of fertile countryside are flooded, sometimes with much loss of life and always with the destruction of valuable property In the arid West, water is always al-ways a problem, and too often when it comes, water is a problem prob-lem because it comes too quickly and with too much force. Help Needed So, many years ago the people who live in the West called on the national government to help them with the problem of water. And reclamation projects were begun. Some of them were dreams for many years before they became be-came realities; many other still are in the dream stage. But little by little, the water sources of the West have begun to be tamed. The story of reclamation is not I a story of Republican or Demo-I Demo-I cratic administrations; both pol-I pol-I litical parties have lent their sup-: sup-: port to the solving of the problems prob-lems of the west. That support has been non-partisan and non-political. The reasons for this support are easily understood; there is not enough money in any of the Western states to provide the tremendous tre-mendous sums required to control con-trol the rampaging rivers, to build the huge dams which are necessary. nec-essary. Heavy Expense California, Nevada and Arizona could not have suppiled the money mon-ey to build Hoover Dam, for instance, in-stance, which was one of the early successful efforts to tame the mighty Colorado River. And California, alone, could not I have supplied the money for Shas-1 ta Dam, which controls the Sacramento Sac-ramento River, nor for the vast Friant-Kern project which regulates regu-lates the flow of the rivers of the fertile Central Valley. And Oregon and Washington could not have supplied the money mon-ey to build Bonneville and Grand Coulee, which are a step towards the control of the Columbia River. The people in these areas persuaded per-suaded the federal government to lend the money for the construe. tion of the dams, the irrigation projects and the power projects which accompanied them. That money now is being paid back, with interest. The far-seeing people who proposed pro-posed these vast projects to control con-trol the rivers of the West said that the development of these large dams would pay for the costs of construction, eventually. Many opponents were positive the I dams were a waste of money. Costs Repaid But in the case of almost every ev-ery reclamation project completed in the West, the claims of the most visionary advocates of the project have been exceeded in i actuality. The expansion of the West has been speeded immeasurably by reclamation. Thousands of acres of land, only partly useable as grazing land, have been turned into fertile agricultural land, raising rais-ing valuable cash crops, i Grazing land today is worth from $5 to $10 an acre; but that i same land, turned into agricul tural acreage, is worth from $500 i to $1,500 an acre. The government is repaid in in-j in-j creased income taxes, in interest ! payments made by the power por-j por-j tion of the projects; in direct pay-i pay-i ments by the irrigation districts i concerned. ! And , millions of dollars of val-i val-i uable property have been placed I on the tax rolls of the states, I counties and cities concerned in 5 the West. |