1942: Reclamation

The year 1942 should be noteworthy in the annals of reclamation, not so much for specific tasks accomplished as for the definition which war has given to reclamation and its function. It would be altogether too easy, but equally misleading, to dismiss the subject with the statement that appropriations have been cut, new projects have been deferred for the duration, and the Bureau of Reclamation has been reduced to the status of a maintenance force. Upkeep of the huge reclamation plant and completion of vital projects, notably in the Central Valley of California, are its primary responsibilities, but it is powerless to plan new projects at a time when the nation and its Government must plan solely to win a war.

Such an appraisal of 1942 may be accurate, but it is incomplete, for in relinquishing its planning function, the Bureau has established its place in our economy. It is a peacetime activity which acquires special importance during the troughs of the business cycle. Reclamation became especially prominent in the thirties because it provided jobs — but not non-productive jobs of the notorious leaf-raking type. Quite the contrary. Reclamation is the government in business, and the business is that of utilizing water. Water for power, for irrigation and for domestic use has a cash value, and the finished reclamation projects are revenue-producing businesses which, for the most part, could not have been attempted by private capital. It is necessary that all the dams, aqueducts, canals, and power plants be maintained at top efficiency, but it is appropriate that new projects be suspended.

The pause in reclamation progress gives us an opportunity to appraise its value. In 1942 there were twenty-eight hydroelectric plants in operation on seventeen different projects. These plants were located in eleven of the western states. At the end of the year they had an installed capacity in excess of 1,500,000 kilowatts; and if actual appropriations can be utilized for planned installations, more than 2,000,000 kilowatts will be available by the end of 1943 — over 2,500,000 at the close of 1944. Already much of this power is at work on war matériel. The magnesium plant at Las Vegas, Nev., uses one-quarter of the installed capacity of Boulder Dam, thirty miles away. The expansion of old and the creation of new war industries in California, Oregon, and Washington have been made possible solely by the visionary plans of reclamation engineers in the economically grim thirties. Compared with the installed capacity of all private and public power projects in the country, the amount furnished by the power plants of the Bureau of Reclamation is small, but it is critical. Reclamation also supplies water to 75,000 farms, assuring the fertility of 2,300,000 acres and providing supplementing water supplies on 2,200,000 acres more. These figures are small in the national total, but once again they are important at a time when every pound of sugar from sugar beets, every side of beef, every pound of wool must be counted, and even rationed.

Reclamation is expensive. It is the marginal business of reclaiming submarginal lands for economic use. As a private enterprise it would be condemned as too hazardous an economic risk. As a public enterprise, reclamation has been vindicated by the war, which reveals its dual role — peacetime employment on planned projects, war and peacetime use of unreclaimed natural resources. It may reasonably be hoped that the Bureau will be prepared to resume a sound program of constructive work when peace brings to us the acute problems of rehabilitation.