Arizona republican., 1913-02-10
Charges of Incompetency and Maladministration of the Reclamation Service
 All Embodied In Report
 Going to National House.
SAY UNCLE SAM
 LOSES $6,000,00O
Contract of Government With Pacific Gas and Electric Company is Also Attacked On Ground It Gives Monopoly.
ASSOCIATED PRESS p1sPArcHl

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9.-Charges of incompetency and maladministration of the reclamation service are made and an appropriation of s25,0O0 is asked for congressional inquiry that will deal broadly with reclamation projects are embodied in a report that will be sent tomorrow to the house by the commit tee on interior department expendi- lures. The report recommends during the pendency of the inquiry the "re- mOval from office of Assistant Secre- tarv of Interior Adams and F. H. New ell and L. c. Hill, director and super visng engineer respectively of the rec lama,iCn service.
 The interior department officials. il1- cluding Director Newell flatly denied tonight the allegations printed in the report. which is unsigneds but which was given out by the committee with the statement that Representative Hensley of Missouri, would present it tomorrow Hensley is chairman of the subcommittee that has been investigat- i ing the affairs of the Indian tribes, whose interests the Hensley report
 says are outrageously intermingled with the affairs of the reclamation ser
 vice." Other members of the sub
 committee are Representatives of Cal ! laway Of Texas and Hanna of North 1 Dakota since he became governor.
 The report charges that Newell and his associates" discriminated against i the farmers and that corporations op- erating the canals and the bondhold-
 CTS thereof alone received attention from them in the Salt River project" It is alleged that as the reclamation act
 provides that only the estimated cost
 of the construction may be recovered by the government and the estimate ot the secretary of the interior was S3,- 1 S50000 and the expenditures to date
 have been $10.547.396 the governments
 loss on the project appears to be
 $6,747.746.
 "The statement that the government
 will lose $6,O00,0O0 on the Salt River
 Project is absurd, declared Director Newell tonight.
 Tt will collect every dollar invested
 there if the present law is not chang
 ed As for the charges against the re-
 clamation officials any man mention
 ed will welcome an investigation by
 honest competent men. Not one
 charge has been made in the report
 but that can be refuted absolutely
 Probably no bureau has been investi l gated oftener Its structures are
 among the great works of our times: it's efficiency and economy of admins
 tration has received the praise of its investigators. It is poor reward foI
 faithful performance of duty to be compelled to submit to an attack SC
 partisan and unfair as is contained
 in this report which bears no sigma 5 ture It looks like another adroi : attack on conservation, the kinds it: \ friends expect with every change O administration. The report is tumble of half truths and whole misstate l ments.
 | The report recommends equity pro d ceedings to cancel the goVernmen n contract with the Pacific Gas (
 Electric company. by which this cor C poration is given monopoly on pow s CT developed at Roosevelt dam, and { : institute criminal proceedings accord ' ing to it's judgment"
 v The invasion of the water right is of the Pima and Maricopa Indian m in Arizona and the despoiling of thei It. farms: the gathering in of big tract ts by the Arizona Canal company an ce other concerns, stock Juggling opera l., tions by canal promoters that cause CT many farmers to pay several time ,n over for every canal delivering thei
 water: tl.e half million dollars eXper mt allure by the Reclamation Service he the Gia River Water Area again' )t. the protest of the Indians "a Wol of disastrous to the Indians and Valuab ed only to land grabbers' and the r' lis signation of w. H. Code, irrigatiC CT engineer of the Indian bureau, n- soon as it became known that Il sin committee was to investigate matter " are among the things charged in u en report
 ,ly Code had formerly been irrigati'
 engineer for A. J. Chandler. who t ,ly committee says, According to t to testimony before us, owned a tract rst 1SO, 900 acres and defrauded the. go les ernment Of it by dummy entries.