Imperial press and farmer., 1902-11-22
Water Users Should Control.

dDSOluJely COHJIOl Iue WoOVl Ih"I II rigates the same He is opposed to the wyoming law which provides that the waters of the State should be dis tributed by State officials who may know nor care nothing about the busl- ness, and who, as a rule, are con- trolled by political cliques and posses He declares that the waters Of stream should be distributed by the men who irrigate land from that stream and that such distribution should be in accordance with well-de- fined rights in the stream.
 In his speech at Omaha recently be- fore the Executive Committee of the Omaha Commercial Club he said on this subject:
 We have had to contend against wrong theories emanating from the West. from the beginning of this move ment: We have fought our way over them, one at time, inch by men, ana step by step, until we have finally overcome most of them. First, we had to defeat State cesSiOn; then we nau to defeat the State Leasing Bill, then we had to defeat the State Engineers, Bill. All of these turned the control of the reclamation of Uncle Sans farm over to the state politicians All or these measures were either advocated or approved at one time or another by Elwood Mead, the irrigation expert in charge of the irrigation investlga- tions of the office of experiment sta tions of the Department of Agricul- ture.
 But the ghost of state control. like that of Banquo, will not down. MT. Mead ever since he has held that of flee, has used the influence which it gives him to try and induce the adop- tion in every Western State of code of water laws, providing for an admin istrative system similar to that of Wyoming, where the water is dis tributed by corps of State ditch ten ders appointed by State officials.
 Such system as this is the very thing that should not be created, where it does not already exist. It puts the control of the distribution of the waters of a State in the hands of a great political irrigation machine con- trolled by State politicians, and raises innumerab1e possibilities of complica tiOns between the State and national governments in carrying into actual operation the national irrigation act.
 Home Rule in Irrigation.
 What is wanted is the exact contrary of this theory of centralized political State control of irrigation "Home rule in irrigation" should be the slogan of the irrigators of the West, from this time on. The individual irrigator should manage the distribution of the water from his own ditch on his own farm. The land owners under each canal system, large or small, should manage it's own affairs in practically the same way, distributing the water from it's canal to the farmers who are entitled to it. Where more than one canal system takes water from a sin gle stream they should all be organized together into one association to man. age their mutual interests and divide the water among themselves.
 If public officers are necessary, each drainage basin should be organized separately into an administrative dis trict, having power to elect it's own water commissioners and ditch ten ders. No such officers should be ap- pointed and put over any irrigated community by any Governor or any State board of any kind, and no such administrative district should be or ganized unless it is done voluntarily hU iCpa hoT hoir