Article August 14, 1902 Issue

The Irrigation of Arid Lands

Boston Transcript

Secretary Hitchcock and Director Walcott of the Geological Survey are taking a deep personal interest in the execution of the new irrigation law. Secretary Hitchcock has said that it is as important in its way as the homestead act, and that to put it well into operation is a work sufficiently valuable to make him remain at the head of the Interior Department, even at a sacrifice. Details of the execution of the irrigation act have been committed to the Geological Survey, and under its authority much of the work will be done by the chief of its division of hydrography, Frederick H. Newell, who has been a student and advocate of irrigation for years. Mr. Newell when asked about the matter to-day, said:—

"The first work to be done is to send civil engineering parties into the field to investigate and report on three distinct phases of the work to 'be accomplished. For instance, take a given territory which it is desired to irrigate. Before any actual construction is begun, it is necessary to ascertain the cost of the construction of the dam and canal; to survey and plan the details of each, and besides the law requires reports to be made as to the amount of land to be irrigated and the probable benefit in dollars and cents to each acre. When you realize that the work is to be done not at any given locality, but that the most available locations are to be selected, the vastness of the work becomes more apparent."

Mr. Newell stated that from the passage of the irrigation bill to the present time the work done embraced the sending out of surveying parties to make observations and report on the details.

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