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State Administration of Natural Resources in the West*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Vincent Ostrom
Affiliation:
University of Oregon

Extract

West of the one hundredth meridian, the average annual rainfall is generally less than twenty inches except for higher mountainous areas and the humid area west of the Cascade range in western Washington and Oregon and an area west of the Coast range in northwestern California. With less than twenty inches of rainfall, irrigation and dry-farming methods are required to supplement and conserve the native moisture if successful crops are to be produced. At twenty inches of rainfall successful agriculture is subject to extreme hazards from frequent droughts that call to mind the tragedy of crop failure and dust storms. In the humid Pacific Northwest the dry summer climate introduces another variable limiting successful agricultural production without supplementary water.

American institutional arrangements, sustenance patterns and resource policies were conceived in humid England and developed in the humid regions of the United States. However, the general aridity of the West stands in marked contrast to the humidity that prevailed in the physical environment where American social institutions and traditions were formed. This alteration of the physical environment has caused an important shift in the balance of human ecology requiring significant modification in institutional arrangements and social policy, especially in regard to the control and development of natural resources.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1953

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References

1 Early studies of the aridity of the West and its implications for public policy include Powell, John W., Reports on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States … (2nd. ed., Washington, 1879)Google Scholar; Smythe, William E., The Conquest of Arid America (New York, 1900)Google Scholar; Turner, Frederick Jackson, The Frontier in American History (New York, 1921)Google Scholar; Mead, Elwood, Irrigation Institutions (New York, 1903)Google Scholar.

2 Litigation may be instituted to adjudicate water rights in the entire Sacramento River basin as a result of conflicts over diversion into the San Joaquin basin. In the development of the California Water Plan, sensitivity over water rights is unquestionably a motive for plans to divert Feather River water south across the Tehachapi Mountains with a pump lift of approximately 3,000 feet instead of diverting the Kern River on the Sierra Nevada at an elevation high enough to reduce pumping greatly, or perhaps even permit a gravity system.

3 Mead, op. cit. Mead was one of the pioneers in the development of the doctrines of prior appropriation rights, and as consultant to the Wyoming constitutional convention and as Wyoming state engineer he was generally credited with the development of the “Wyoming system” of administration of water rights.

4 Kelso, Paul, “The Arizona Ground Water Act,” Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 1, pp. 178–82 (06, 1948)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Turner, op. cit., p. 258.

6 An interesting venture of state government in the development of reclamation projects occurred under the provisions of the Carey Act of 1894, which permitted each state in the arid West to select one million acres of land and plan for its irrigation and settlement. Some of the largest irrigation projects in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming were developed under these arrangements.

7 The Marshall Plan was preceded by important preliminary investigations by William Hammond Hall, state engineer, and Elwood Mead, then professor of irrigation at the University of California. See Hall, , Irrigation in California (Sacramento, 1888)Google Scholar; and Mead, , Report of Irrigation Investigation in California, Department of Agriculture Bulletin No. 100 (Washington, 1901)Google Scholar.

8 Angel, Arthur D., “Political and Administrative Aspects of the Central Valley Project of California,” unpub. diss. (UCLA, 06, 1944), pp. 4045Google Scholar.

9 Spreckels, Rudolph, “How the 1922 Water and Power Act Was Defeated,” Public Ownership, Vol. 6, p. 163 (08, 1929)Google Scholar. While Marshall later opposed the Water and Power Act, those who led the fight for the measure took the Marshall Plan as the basis for their conception of the development of the water resources of the Central Valley.

10 California, Statutes, 1933, Ch. 1042.

11 California, Water Project Authority, Feasibility of State Ownership and Operation of the Central Valley Project of California (Sacramento, 1952), p. 22Google Scholar.

12 Quoted in U. S. Bureau of Agricultural Economics, History of Legislation and Policy Formation of the Central Valley Project, by Montgomery, Mary and Clawson, Marion (Berkeley, 1948), p. 10Google Scholar.

13 Los Angeles Daily News, December 2, 1949.

14 California, State Water Resources Board, Report on Feasibility of Feather River Project and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Diversion Projects Proposed as Features of the California Water Plan (Sacramento, 1951), p. 7Google Scholar.

15 California, Water Project Authority, op. cit., p. 18.

16 Oregon, Willamette River Basin Commission, Bulletin, Willamette Valley Project, Salem, January, 1947 (mimeo), p. 5Google Scholar.

17 Daniel M. Ogden, Jr., “The Federal Power Disposal Decisions of 1937.” (Paper presented at Conference on Research on the Policy and Administration of Natural Resources, University of Oregon, August 8-9, 1952.)

18 President's Water Policy Commission, “Water Resource Policy and State Law,” Bonneville Power Administration (Staff reports, mimeo), pp. 166–74Google Scholar.

19 Loc. cit.

20 State ex rel. Public Utility District No. 1 of Skagit County v. Wylie, 192 Pac. 2d. 806.

21 Washington, Session Laws, 1949, Ch. 227. This legislation was repealed and reenacted in modified form in the 1953 session of the legislature. Governor Langlie has declared his intention of activating the Water Power Commission when the new legislation becomes effective in June, 1953.

22 Houghton, N. D., “Problems of Public Power Administration in the Southwest—Some Arizona Applications,” Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 4, pp. 116–29 (03, 1951)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Ibid., pp. 128–29.

24 Oja, A. R., “The Oil Boom—What It Means to Montana's Youngsters,” Montana Education, Vol. 28, p. 6 (02, 1952)Google Scholar.

25 Holmes, Jack E., The Public Land Question in New Mexico (Albuquerque, 1947), p. 36Google Scholar.

26 Cottam, Walter P., “Is Utah Sahara Bound?”, Bulletin of the University of Utah, Vol. 37, p. 37 (Feb. 19, 1947)Google Scholar.

27 45 Stat. 1065. Italics added.

28 S. 817 (82nd Cong., 1st sess.).

29 George D. Dysart, memorandum, June 23, 1952.

30 The Oregonian, March 4, 1951.

31 Idaho, , Session Laws, 1951Google Scholar, Ch. 3.

32 Eugene, Register-Guard, July 31, 1952Google Scholar.

33 Ibid., July 19 and 31, 1952.

34 A correspondent active in the affairs of local public utility district and municipal utilities has made the interesting observation: “Significantly these lobbyists in their antifederal tirades frequently plead for ‘state rights’ in order to obtain home rule or local autonomy but they bitterly fight any home rule at the county, city or power district level or other real local control.”

35 H.R. 7084 (82nd Cong., 2nd sess.).

36 Johnson, Eldon L., “The Pacific Northwest States and the Development of the Columbia,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York City, 12, 1949Google Scholar.