Mountain Home Republican. [volume] (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1915-1946, 1917-11-10
Several Members of Boise
Water Users Association
in This City are Directly
Involved in Water Fight
TWO PRICES MADE
FOR WATER RIGHT
Law Provides Water to be Furnished
at Cost but $40 Reduction offered
if Settlers Will Form Organization
to Suit Desires of Officers of Gov.
eminent Bureau.

oulCdu.
A number of Mountain Home peo-
pie are much concerned about the
action of the reclamation service, in
charge of the Boise government pro
ject. The price of water op that
-roject has been fixed at $50 per acre
payable in 20 graduated installments
and the directors of the water-users
association are making fight to have
the price reduced, or at least equit
able determined before payments be-
Gin
When the project was originally
started there were a number of irri-
cation districts with an insufficient
water supply taken in, and later they
were one at a'time released and sold
definite portion of the storagescapa-
city of the Arrow Rock reservoir at
a price less than settlers under the
project proper are now being required
TO pay.
Mountain Home land owners under
the project have recently been sent
new water right applications to sign.
in which they agree to pay the fixed
price of $50 per acre, and believe
taat they have found a niger in the
wood pile in these A section of the
amended reclamation law provides
that when a majority of the land
owners on any subdivision sign up for
water at a higher price than was
originally contracted for, that it shall
then be binding on all the water
users. The statement coming with
this contract is that water will not be
delivered next year unless the paper
is signed. A concerted movement
is being made on the project to Sc
cure a readjustment of the water
rate and it is alleged that signers of
the new contract will be barred from
taking part in the movement
Mountain Home members of the
Boise water users association claim
that this method of getting the set
tiers tied up in a contract that they
do not understand is right in line
with the former practice Of the re-
clamatiOn service, that not only have
the settlers been coerced in an at
tempt to make them agree to the
price of water, but that they have
been offered a reduction of ten dol
lars an acre, and an additional year
if they would abandon their organi-
zation and create new one recon-
mended by the service. The argu
ment against this course is that the
law provides for the fixing Of the cost
of water, and that if the cost is only
$40 per acre, the secretary of the in
terror has no right, nor any shadow
of legality in reducing the price
$1,6OG,O00 in order to build up a
machine to perpetuate the control of
the reclamation service in the hands
of bunch of his appointees.
There have been hundreds of
charges made of incompetence and
graft in the work of the government
employees, the most notable one of
which was in the building of the
Brock pipe line. The line was sur
veyed, passed on, and then it was
stated that it had been abandoned
The people whose land it was to|
water believed that they would never
be supplied with water, and sold their
land for an average price of about
ten dollars an acre. Nearly all the
buyers were employees of the govern
ment, and as soon as the transfers
were made the pipe line was built, |
This made the land as valuable as
ever and at the present time it is |
rated as worth about 500 per acre.
there was a great deal of fuss made |
and it was believed by the people Ofi
that section that the project engineer
and the engineer of that division
were both dismissed from tht gov
ernment service but both eventually
were appointed to better jobs.