Proceedings [of the] fourth National Conservation Congress [at] Indianapolis, October 1-4, 1912

by United States. National Conservation Congress

Report, Standing Committee on Waters

Report of the Standing Committee on Waters. W. C. Mendenhall, Washington, D. C., Acting Chairman.

To the public the Conservation movement seemed to rise suddenly in the last few months of 1908 and the early part of the year 1909, but what the people of the United States was really witnessing then was not so much the origin of a movement as its organization. Through a generation before that time Government bureaus, individuals, and associations here and there had been methodically assembling facts, and those who were familiar with these facts had been reaching conclusions that were oftentimes disturbing in their tenor. These individuals and groups were brought together, their conclusions were given publicity of a most effective type, and what had been scattered and disorganized recognition of a vital problem was given solidarity and nation-wide recognition by the acts of President Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot in organizing the National Conservation Commission and calling the Conference of Governors. The Forest Service, the Reclamation Service, and the Geological Survey had locked up in their archives the results of decades of research by their representatives, and these results supplied the facts which were the stimulus and the basis for the Conservation movement. Since that first great meeting, the Conservation Congress, giving official expression to the movement and formulating its doctrines and its platform, has served as a medium for the exchange of ideas among those who are engaged in one or the other of its manifold activities, for the subject-matter of Conservation is as comprehensive as the materials with which humanity deals. Furthermore, the term itself has been impressed upon the public mind. It has passed out of the category of a cult for the few, and has been taken up by statesmen and politicians, scientists and divines, commercial organizations, manufacturing associations, and has even invaded the realm of diplomacy. This proves merely that the seeds were well sown by those who were sponsors for the movement. Their work, the task of focusing public attention upon a theretofore neglected but vital series of problems, was superlatively well done.

Years have passed since that time. It is appropriate that we review the results of those years as it was appropriate in 1908 to make our first inventory of the primary subject-matter of Conservation, namely, our natural resources. The period of initiation, difficult but well performed, is past. There remains a task that will never be finished—the equally difficult and the infinitely slower process of applying the principles of Conservation to our every-day activities. Such an application must be practical, reasonable, and gradual so that modes of life and industrial habits in which change is to be affected can be given time and opportunity to adjust to that change. How well have we, the workers in the ranks for these principles, performed our task? In what fashion has the movement been carried on? What real and creative steps have been taken in the public interest to reserve for future generations without unnecessary suppression of opportunity for the individual in the present or denial of his needs, that share in our natural wealth which should be so reserved?

I shall confine myself to a brief and casual review of that phase of the Conservation movement which deals with the one resource—water. Even in dealing with this one item in the subject-matter of Conservation, I shall have to leave aside for treatment by others, and indeed by other organizations than this, that phase of the problem of the waters which deals primarily with transportation and its allied problems of river improvement and waterway construction. There still remains a broad field, for water is the universal resource. Doctor McGee has estimated that the ultimate control of population in the United States will be exerted by the limitations in its water supply. We cannot say that this limit in population, even though it be placed at from five hundred to one thousand million people, is one that does not concern this generation, for we feel very keenly now in our arid and semi-arid sections the handicap which lack of water places upon our growth. Irrigation and dry-farming methods are attempts to overcome this handicap and forces us to realize that the ultimate growth predicted by Dr. McGee can be reached only through the most careful husbanding of the most universal and important gift of nature—water.

Because the human body, like all other organic structures, is largely water and because all of its nutritive and renewing processes are exercised by the function of water as the solvent of other foods, it has a primary value to man superior to that of any other substance. Its secondary value, scarcely less important than the primary and closely related to it in character, is as an aid in the production of nearly all things which man uses. In the humid regions, the supply is sufficient naturally so that the necessity of water is ordinarily given no more thought than the necessity for air, although without either we should instantly perish. Man’s use of water in crop production, hence, is automatic and unconscious in the eastern United States, but in western part, and especially in the arid districts, he at once becomes conscious of its importance because plans and crops fail without it. He establishes engineering works and conducts it to the land in order that food may be grown upon the land. Here, in the pioneer stages of settlement, comes the first great waste. Water was and too frequently still is carelessly used in irrigation. An equivalent of twenty or twenty-five feet in depth has been applied annually to the land where four or five feet is ample. The excess is sheer waste and in its application the land is ruined. Canals are often carelessly constructed and half of their carrying capacity leaks out before the tract to be irrigated is reached.

As settlement increases and demand becomes more intense, these conditions are improved. Their improvement in our own arid West and Southwest began under the pressure of necessity before the Conservation movement was given a name, but that improvement nonetheless represented the application of Conservation principles and the movement centered attention upon this and similar wastes, made men more generally conscious of them, and stimulated preventive measures. This stimulus, acting upon the public mind, aided many of the Government bureaus that for years had been combating such waste. The Department of Agriculture has a Bureau of Irrigation Investigations, which has systematically studied irrigation methods in the West and Southwest and has published many valuable reports calling attention to the losses of water in irrigation and suggesting methods for its prevention. The Geological Survey in its series of water-supply papers has repeatedly warned communities of the injuries and economic waste resulting from bad management of water supplies. The Reclamation Service, represented in its foundation a branch of Conservation, established and made a practical working idea. Since its foundation it has systematically continued the great work begun by the passage of its organic act in 1902, and is reclaiming, by careful and economic methods, millions of otherwise waste acres in the public land States. It has reached the point where the building of impounding reservoirs and of the canals by which the impounded water is conducted to the lands has been brought to practical completion on many of the projects so that its task is transformed into one of inducing settlement, of inculcating principles of economic irrigation practice in the minds of the farmers; of increasing the duty of water and therefore its usefulness, to the maximum; and of reclaiming through the establishment of drainage systems, lands which have been ruined by over-irrigation under the old systems absorbed by the reclamation projects. This movement is a part of, has aided, and has in turn been aided by the propaganda. It is practical Conservation of a high type.

I should like to diverge here for a moment to a collateral phase of Conservation activity which indirectly bears upon reclamation by irrigation. Our coal land laws provide for the sale of those parts of the public domain underlain by coal deposits at prices of not less than $10 or $20 per acre. Prior to 1906, this law was interpreted as evaluating coal lands on the basis of the thickness, quality and depths of individual beds, and basing sale prices upon these values. Through the fruition of this policy, coal lands are no longer sold at the minimum legal price unless they have minimum values. If coals are of sufficiently good quality and exist in sufficient thickness, they may now be sold at $40, $50, $100, $200, or even $500 per acre. A recent sale in the Rock Springs district, Wyoming, of one section of land at prices ranging from $370 to $410 per acre, netted the Government one quarter of a million dollars more than would have been received under the old policy of sales at minimum prices. This increment of a quarter million goes, like all other receipts from sales of public lands, into the reclamation fund and is there used in the application of water to the arid lands in the West. The Conservation phase of the present coal land policies is thus closely related to the question of waters and their use. The valuation of this natural resource and the sale at valuation prices was one of the collateral movements which stimulated and led to public recognition of the need of Conservation. It is a thoroughly practical application of Conservation principles and is an excellent example of governmental activity in this direction.

In one of the arid valleys of southern California in which irrigated lands bring prices of from $500 to $3,000 per acre and in which the limit to the number of acres to which such values are affixed depends wholly upon the quantity of water available, there has of course been earnest study of every possible means by which this quantity could be increased or made to serve a larger acreage. Here, in 1909, an interesting, practical step in Conservation was taken. Prior to that period water users in this valley who derive an important part of their supply from underground resources which, because of excessive drafts, were becoming depleted, had adopted the unique device of spreading flood waters which would otherwise escape to the sea and be lost, over the rough alluvial lands at the base of the mountain slopes in order that they might there sink and replenish the underground resources. The lands best adapted to this purpose had remained public lands because of their rough and uncultivable character, although adjacent to them were privately owned lands worth many hundreds of dollars per acre. In 1909 a law was passed by which these public lands were set aside for use in the distribution of these flood waters. They are now, and will remain, a permanent public reserve devoted to the conservation of water supplies and the increase of the quantity available for irrigation in a region in which water for this purpose has perhaps a higher value than in any other part of the United States. Here again is an example of practical Conservation work accomplished through the co-operation of private and governmental agencies.

The passage of the so-called Weeks bill in 1911 likewise marks a great advance in the direction of Conservation legislation. This is the bill which provides for the creation of an Appalachian forest reserve by the purchase of privately owned lands in the Appalachian Mountains. Its administration is in the hands of a commission whose active agents are the Forest Service and the Geological Survey, and one of the features of the bill is the clause which provides that the Geological Survey must affirm that the purchase of the lands will favorably affect the navigability of the streams on whose headwaters they lie, before the purchase can be made. Thus the conservation of waters is involved as well as that of the forests and of lands through the prevention of erosion. Those of you who for years advocated such a bill and assisted in its final enactment will agree with me, I believe, in the statement that its passage would not have been possible without the preliminary education of public opinion accomplished by the great pioneer advocates of the Conservation principles.

There is and will continue to be need for revision of the laws under which the administrative officers of the Government work to the end that these officers may administer our public resources more economically, more effectively, with less waste and therefore more thoroughly in the public interest. The enactment of laws does not anticipate the need for their enactment. There must always be widespread recognition of that need before public opinion crystallizes into statute. For, after all, the enactment of a law is nothing more nor less than the recognition on the part of our lawmakers of a public necessity which you and I as citizens force upon their attention. Until new laws can be secured, the task of the administrative officer is to administer with the greatest efficiency possible those laws that do exist. Under the stimulus of an active public opinion an interpretation may be given old laws which will enable them to fit the newer and changed conditions, for no enactment is absolutely rigid in its terms. An example of this adaptation of a law long upon our statute books to the passing of pioneer conditions in the West and the substitution for them of those changed conditions that result from augmented population, is that of the coal land law to which your attention has been called. The statute has not been altered since its passage in 1873, but coal lands are being sold under it now at prices which are based upon real values instead of at the lowest possible price under the law, as was true prior to 1906.

Under the stimulus of the changed character of public opinion, which has resulted from Conservation agitation, all of our public land laws are being carefully scrutinized to determine whether they do not admit of an interpretation and of an administration that is more in consonance with Conservation principles than the interpretation and administration of the past. Among the statutes thus scrutinized is the Carey Act, a law only less vital to the West than the Reclamation Act. In general it provides that public lands may be transferred by the Federal Government to the State in which they lie if that State will enter into a contract for their irrigation, by the terms of which they will eventually be delivered to bona fide homesteaders in tracts of suitable size. Undoubtedly, there have been instances in the past of careless administration of this law. The Federal Government has considered that its responsibility to the settler had ceased when the lands were turned over to the State in trust to him. The State, in turn, has considered that its responsibility ceased when the contract with the irrigating company was signed, and this company has been left free to deal with its actual and prospective settlers in a fashion that was intended too frequently to bring profits to a promoting company rather than water upon arid lands. It has thus happened that settlers, depending upon the State and through the State upon the Federal Government for protection of their interests, have found when the time came to apply for patents to their lands that although they had paid to a company large sums for water supplies, the water was not delivered, the land could not be reclaimed as the law required, and they were therefore unable to secure patent to it; but the irrigating or promoting company to which their funds had gone had disappeared and was inaccessible under the law. The genuine farmer, who at the sacrifice of hard-earned funds and years of labor was intended to be the beneficiary of this law, became instead its victim. This condition is believed to be past. The Federal Government and many of the States are now exhibiting a keen recognition of their responsibilities and of scrutinizing with the utmost care the water supply of each proposed project, the practicability of the engineering features of that project, and the financial standing and responsibility of its backers. A recent interesting example of this changed attitude occurred in one of the Western States, which in the past has administered this law carelessly, but I am glad to record is now exhibiting due care in meeting its responsibilities. In this case, literature issued by the promoters came to the attention of the Department of the Interior. In this literature statements were made to prospective buyers as to the available water supply and as to the acreage to which it would be applied that were known from the departmental records to be highly misleading. The attention of the Governor of the State was called to this condition of affairs by an emphatic letter from the Secretary of the Interior. The State in turn called upon the promoting company for an explanation. The representatives of the company hastened to Washington for a hearing. As a result of that hearing, the acreage segregated in the project was promptly reduced, the company was forced to agree to cease its sale of water rights to private lands until the rights of the Government lands to which it was inviting settlers were satisfied, and thus the situation so full of menace to prospective settlers was promptly corrected. Other examples of this type of action which represents closer, more careful administration of old laws might be multiplied. Each of them marks a step in the application of the principles for which the Conservation Congress stands.

If the first use of water by man is in the direct sustenance of life and its second is for the production of food supplies through irrigation, perhaps its third most important use is the development of power for all of those manifold purposes tending toward the amelioration of life and the increase of its comforts, for which power may be used. Cities are lighted; street cars are moved; ores are smelted; manufacturing plants are supplied with their motive power; homes are heated; and water is pumped for irrigation by the use of hydro-electric power. No question has been the subject of more bitter controversy than that of the control of this tremendous resource. It has been energetically sought on the one hand by those who seek opportunities for profit and desire that no control be exercised over those opportunities by the power of the State. On the other hand, public opinion, working largely through its State and Federal representatives, has demanded that this resource whose magnitude can be but rudely estimated, and whose future value but guessed at, be so controlled that communities depending upon it shall not be unduly taxed for the purpose of piling up private profits. Here again, both public opinion and Federal officers have repeatedly urged the enactment of new laws which will make possible the exercise of reasonable control in the public interests and at the same time properly safeguard capital which must be invested in order that the resources now wasted may develop and become useful. Bills have been introduced and debated in Congress; conferences have been held with representatives of the public and of capital, but the plans thus far considered have brought no fruition in amended legislation, although some excellent bills are under consideration and it is believed will soon become law. Here again, the task of the administrative officer is to so interpret and apply the laws now upon our statute books, pending the enactment of others more satisfactory, that development may continue and the rights of the public of this generation and the next be at the same time duly safeguarded. Here also there has been progress in the interpretation of law. The responsibility for the administration of the laws for the development of water powers in the national forests lies in the Forest Service where it is admirably exercised in the public interest. The law which provides for the development of powers on the public domain, whether within or without the reserves, is a permissory law, one that authorizes the department having jurisdiction to permit the development of these water powers under general regulations to be fixed by the Secretary. After a thorough study of the situation, the Forest Service on December 28, 1910, issued certain regulations providing for the development of powers under this permissory law, the permit being by the terms of the law itself subject to cancellation at any time and the regulations under it providing for moderate charges upon the developing company. With these regulations in force in the national forests, and no similar procedure provided for on the public lands outside the forests which are under the jurisdiction of the Interior Department, applicants for the privilege of developing water powers which lay in part within and in part without the forest reserves found themselves under two jurisdictions without any provision for uniform procedure. The problem as to the precise amount of control that could be exercised on the Interior Department lands under the act of 1901 has not been solved until recently; but as a result of this final solution, there were approved by Secretary Fisher on the 24th of August, 1912, regulations controlling the issue of permits for power development outside of the national forests that are in substantial accord with those heretofore in force within the forests. These regulations provide for the exercise of the authority of the Secretary in a definite, uniform, and systematic manner that much more fully safeguards the rights of the public than the policy heretofore pursued in relation to public water powers. The situation, therefore, seems to be as well safeguarded as it can be under the present statutes, at least so far as hydro-electric powers on other than navigable streams are concerned, and this end has been accomplished not by new legislation, which we all recognize as badly needed, but by a proper interpretation and acceptance of responsibility under old legislation.

An incidental phase of the effort to administer a law which provides for no definite tenure of lands having power values has been the constantly repeated attempt of interests desiring to acquire valuable water powers to secure them under the irrigation laws, those laws having great advantage from the commercial viewpoint of providing for a grant instead of a revocable permit. Application after application has been filed with the Department of the Interior in which it is stated solemnly that the rights of way are desired for purposes of irrigation, when it is perfectly obvious to the engineering advisers of the Secretary that the power value is the dominant value and that if the waters are used for irrigation at all, it will be merely in order to effect a technical compliance with the law under which they are acquired. Refusal to approve rights of way of this type have been followed by appeals and by emphatic protests on the part of the applicants. These protests take various forms. Among them are attempts to influence public opinion through various congresses similar to this Congress, and other attempts to secure the enactment of special legislation which will grant to the applicant that which he is unable to secure through the administrative officers. In a particularly interesting case of this type recently acted upon by the Department of the Interior, the acting Secretary expressed the present policy of the department in these emphatic terms, which I am sure will appeal to every member of this Congress. He said:

I consider it the imperative duty of every supervisory officer of the Government upon whom any duty devolves to conserve the paramount interests of the people, to protect these natural power sites from exploitation under any law which successfully invoked would turn them over to private interests charged with a perpetual easement against the United States.

One other type of administrative action in connection with the conservation of water resources has recently been inaugurated which may well be brought to the attention of this Congress. This is a new exercise by the President of the power of withdrawal conferred upon him by the so-called withdrawal act, approved June 25, 1910, and amended August 24, 1912. By this action those lands in arid States upon which small water supplies essential to the control of the adjoining range are situated are withheld from entry. Those of you who are acquainted with the range industry of Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico realize that the use and control of the ranges are exercised not so much through the ownership of the range lands themselves as through the ownership of small tracts which include the springs and other watering places that alone make the ranges accessible and of value. Literal war has been waged between rival stock interests in parts of the West over the control of springs. Large interests have frequently forced their rivals to abandon the range in a particular area by acquiring through the application of scrip or by a real or pretended exercise of homestead rights the lands on which the springs that alone give value to the range are located. Laws have from time to time been considered which will provide properly for the disposition of those remaining parts of the public domain that are chiefly valuable for grazing purposes. It is recognized that the homestead and desert land laws are inappropriate for the acquisition of range lands in that they do not provide for a sufficient acreage to make the stock industry possible. If the time shall come when such a law is placed upon the statute books, and at that time all of the water supplies adjacent to the ranges shall have been acquired by private interests, the Government will be unable to dispose of its range lands even under a favorable law except to those who already control the water supplies which are the key to the situation. Recognizing this important condition and desiring likewise to provide for fair play between rival stock men on the remaining public lands, the President, upon the recommendation of the Secretary of the Interior, has inaugurated the policy of withholding from entry lands upon which these desert watering places exist, and in pursuance of this policy the first desert water hole withdrawal was made in March, 1912.

It will be realized from this brief review that the process of translating the Conservation doctrines into action is well under way. Before and since the First Conservation Congress met, Federal bureaus have advocated practical measures for the proper use of our natural resources, water among them. With the enlightenment of public opinion dating from the organization of the National Commission and the meeting of the Governors the work has been greatly facilitated. It is advancing now not only through the medium of the unorganized effort of individuals, associations, and isolated bureaus and divisions in the public service, but by the organized efforts of an enthusiastic body of supporters. Laws embodying its principles have passed, proposed laws inimical to those principles have been defeated, old laws have been re-examined and reinterpreted to accord more fully with Conservation doctrines in the public interests. Party platforms are no longer complete without a Conservation plank and indeed it may almost be said that a new party has been founded upon the Conservation idea. On the whole the country and this Congress have ample ground for optimism in considering the great advance that has been made.