CHAPTER XXIII IRRIGATED LAND By F. H. NEWELL 1 The man who undertakes to buy or sell irrigated land has much to learn and, perhaps, something to unlearn, if he has acquired his land experience in non-irrigated countries. He must have thoroughly drilled into his consciousness the fact that in the arid West land values are dependent primarily upon water; that is, upon ability to obtain an adequate supply of good water at the right time and place. While this is conspicuously the case with agricultural lands, it is also true, though less immediately apparent with city and suburban 1 Frederick Haynes Newell, Washington, D. C., Consulting Engineer to the United States Reclamation Service, operated under the Department of the Interior. In 1885, he was graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been Assistant Hydraulic Engineer of the United States Geological Survey, Hydrographer, and Chief of the Hydrographic Branch. He was the first Chief Engineer of the United States Reclamation Service and, later, he was Director of the Service. He has served as Secretary of the National Geographic Society and of the National Forestry Association. He has also served on committees of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Washington Society of Engineers (of which he was President in 1907), Washington Academy of Science (of which he was Vice-President in 1907), Western Society of Engineers and is a past-President of the American Association of Engineers. He was a member of the U. S. Land Commission, U. S. Inland Waterways Commission, National Advisory Boards for Fuel and Structural Materials, and Illinois State Board of Examiners of Structural Engineers, Consulting Engineer of Pennsylvania Giant Power Survey. Among his best known writings are the following books: "The Public Lands and their Water Supply," "Irrigation in the United States," Crowell; "Principles of Irrigation Engineering," McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc.; "Irrigation Engineering," "Irrigation Management," and "Engineering as a Career," D. Van Nostrand Co. property, the growth and development of which, however favorable the climatic conditions, are limited by this question of water supply. Such cities, for example, as Los Angeles and San Diego, California, have a future which may be said to be bounded only by their ability to obtain enough good water to meet the needs of increasing population. Land Values Rest on Water.-In all parts of the country the question of water supply or water regulation is an important one in determining real estate values; but where, as in the eastern part of the United States, water of sufficient quantity and of good quality is obtainable with comparative ease, the price of real estate is not so directly affected as it is in the West. In some localities, particularly in the Mississippi valley, or along the Coast, it is the excess of water, with liability to floods or overflow, that has the depressing effect upon land values. Water Supply.-It is indeed hard for an eastern man, who has absorbed the fundamentals of English Common Law regarding riparian rights to gain a clear conception of the doctrine which prevails in the arid lands brought into the United States from Mexico with her Spanish traditions. This completely nullifies the theory of the English Common Law on water, or, rather, substitutes for it another law which recognizes that the common needs of the people in an arid region are not those of preserving the flow of the stream undiminished in quantity and quality, but that these common needs are best met by taking away from the stream every drop of water possible and by putting it to use in rendering the lands productive. By the application of this principle of appropriation, practically all of the easily available flow of the rivers throughout the western two-fifths of the United States has been claimed and filed upon. In some of the states the aggregate of these filings may be many times the amount of the ordinary flow. Where the doctrines of "priority of appropriation of waters" and of "beneficial use" prevail, many an innocent purchaser from the East, including sometimes the professional real estate man contracting for lands in the arid region, has had the land title examined with all of the care characteristic of the good |