The Roswell daily record. [volume] (Roswell, N.M.) 1903-current, 1906-03-23

the government in great drainage
| works, and further, that the cost O.
such drainage shall be prorated am
long the owners of land benefited and
paid back by the settlers into the
fund. to be used over again for addi
tional reclamation work
Would Create Many Homes
| This plan of developing the inter
| nal resources of the country and ma
king homes of waste places, is splen-
did in it's scope, and appears to be
entirely practicable and profitable.
Take for instance, the single exam
pie of the swamp lands of the Kan
kakee River basin in Indiana and III
inois. Here are some $1,000, acres
of the very richest of bottom lands,
but subject to overflow. They are
worthless except where they have
been reclaimed through expensive pri
yate drainage works, when they have
become worth 800 and $3.50 an acre.
Yet it is estimated by the govern
ment surveyors and engineers that
the entire system could be effectively
drained at cost in the neighborhood
of $40 an acre. The same can be said
of the lands of the Red River Valley
in,
est of grain and farm lands in the
northwest, except that they are fire.
quently overf1owed. 1t would be
worth millions of dollars to the far
mers and settlers. who would occupy
these lands in small tracts, to have
perfect system of drainage provid-
ed. These extensive systems, howev-
er, especially where they are inter
state, seem to be feasible for handA
ling only by the general government.
= The Steenerson bill places the en-
tire management of the work in the
hands of the reclamation service and
the plan of operation follows very
closely the irrigation work now be-
ing done by that branch of the Inte-
rior Department Government lands,
ceded Indian lands and private lands
may be included in any drainage pro-
ject, but in each case, the cost of
the drainage Improvement is to be
borne by the owner of the land and
no settler can have drainage provid-
ed for more than 160 acres, thus in.
surfing the division of the tracts into
small farms, which must be actually
settled upon and titled.
Work Already in Progress.
This work the reclamation service
is qualified to do at this very NOM
ent. While primarily an engineering
bureau, it has in all it's great irriga-
ton projects. to deal directly with
the farmer. 1t must outline a compre-
hensive drainage system for each If
rigation project, since there is as
much danger from too much irriga-
ton as too little, and to do this the
service has its own farm and soil ex-
perts. Some of the irrigation projects
have distinctively drainage features.
in fact are almost as much drainage
as they are irrigation projects. In
the Klamath project 10000 acres,
OF more than half the area of the to
tai project, is rich tule land covered
by eight or ten feet of water, and is
to be drained and converted into ov-
er thousand farms The topograph-
ic branch of the Geological Survey,
of which the Reclamation Service is
also a branch. has already run its
lines over many of the great swamp
areas of the eastern states, and as
soon as the steenerson bill becomes
law the Geological Survey engineers
viii be ready to launch out into i'm
mediate activity in drainage pro
jects.
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