IRRIGATION TRUSTS IN VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA.

Shaded portions show completed trusts. Black lines indicate proposed trusts.

The result was a valuable report upon which was based a comprehensive measure, called the irrigation act, 1886. This provides that any district, upon application to the executive government, giving plans and full particulars of the proposed scheme of irrigation and water supply, including cost, maintenance, probable revenue and necessary rating power, may be constituted an irrigation trust, provided that the opposition to the scheme in the proposed district is not greater than a specified minority, and provided that the minister and chief engineer of water supply report favorably on it. The government having approved of the application the scheme has then to be laid before parliament with all documents, etc., relating thereto, for its sanction. A specially authorized loan is then granted to the trust from a fund specially set apart for the purpose to enable the necessary works to be carried out. A small rate of interest is charged and a sinking fund provided to extinguish the loan. It is also enacted that certain portions of a scheme may be denominated "national" works and paid for solely by the state; or "joint" works, payment being made by both state and trust; or "trust' works, for which the trust alone is responsible.

The trusts are managed by commissioners elected by ballot of the ratepayers in each district, who have full financial control and responsibility in connection with the undertaking, and who appoint the necessary officers for carrying out the works and controlling the supply of water.

Great facilities were thus afforded to districts in which the rainfall was deficient of obtaining an adequate supply of water. The value of this boon was soon recognized, no less than thirty trust districts having been formed since the passing of the act, comprising a ratable area of 2,700,000 acres, to which advances have been made by the state to the extent of £974,000 or about $4,870,000. The total sum authorized by parliament to be lent to the trusts is £1,364,000 ($6,820,000). In addition the State has expended the sum of £799,000 ($3,995,000) on national works, thus the total amount advanced to and spent on the behalf of irrigation trusts is £2,163,000 ($10,815,000).

AREA IRRIGATED.

All the acreage mentioned as conferred

in the first district is not irrigated although ratable. Some of the schemes have been allowed to lapse and several are merely commenced. There remains, however, fully 1,300,000 acres which may be brought under irrigated culture when all the schemes are in full working order. The annual returns to end of 1895 given by the department of water supply show that 76,600 acres have been watered during the past year. Of this total, 30,000 acres consisted merely of grass, 20,000 acres of cereals, and not more than 2,900 acres of vines and fruit trees; the balance being made up of lucern, vegetables, flax, maize, tobacco, etc. This leads to the conclusion that the expenditure has been much in advance of present requirements. That this is so is also shown by the fact that the returns to the state in the shape of interest for money lent is greatly in arrears, the sum outstanding exceeding £160,000 ($800,000).

In many cases the trusts saw no more than the advantages likely to accrue to their districts through possessing a sufficient water supply, and did not consider seriously enough the large liability they assumed for the repayment of principal and interest of the loans they had received from the government, or if they did understand the position they probably relied upon the leniency of their creditors to postpone the day of reckoning until it was quite convenient for them to pay up. Further, at the outset few knew anything of irrigation in a practical way, and especially were they ignorant of the large expenditure necessary to bring land into a fit state to be irrigated. When it is considered that most of the land included in the trust districts is held in blocks of at least 320 acres, it will be seen how large an amount would be received before any considerable area could be utilized for "intensive irrigated culture." The result has been that the available water has not been made use of to anything like the extent contemplated when the schemes were first proposed. The situation, indeed, had become so serious in 1894 that a royal commission was appointed to investigate the affairs of the various trusts, and make recommendations for this amelioration. This body has not yet completed its report.

The methods of rating are not yet uniform; in some trusts each acre is rated

the same, in others there is differential rating according to distance from the channels. According to the water act, 1890, which consolidated previous statutes, and therefore superseded the Irrigation act, 1886, all water used for irrigation purposes must be paid for by measure, but for watering stock and domestic supply, payment may be made as the commissioners of the trust direct. For irrigation therefore a rate of either 6d per inch, 6d per inch per acre or 1d to 2d per 1,000 gallons is charged in addition to the general rate which varies from 1 to 3 shillings in the pound of actual value.

Looking at the present position of the irrigation scheme in this colony, although the expenditure was at the outset on a scale far too lavish for the limited population likely to avail themselves of its ad

vantages, still there is no doubt but that the value of the land within reach of the water channels has been largely increased, and it has been made evident that by means of an artificial water supply the arid plains of the interior are capable of supporting a very large population. With an arrangement to relieve to some extent the heavy liabilities lying upon the trusts, and an increased settlement of people on the land, which such an arrangement would facilitate, the future of irrigation in this part of the world is by means gloomy. We are a young colony, both enterprising and sanguine and not to be dashed by the clouds of temporary depression, as the returns of our exports clearly prove.

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In future papers, some of the more important trusts and their works will be dealt with in detail.

CIFTEEN to twenty years ago, when

were

Plains to the extent of thirty inches, or even more, of rainfall, immense crops grown wherever anything was planted, for the richness of the virgin unwashed soils needs only water and labor to speak miracles to the New England agriculturist. But the newcomers who depended upon such annual rainfall being furnished by Uncle Sam along with the land titles were disappointed and a million homesteads have been abandoned which with water would produce bountifully. Many cities (real cities which had hotels, banks, etc., ten years ago) are now marked only by cellar holes and corner stones. These are blue statements, but they are facts. As in all arid or semi-arid countries since the beginning of history so in Western Kansas and Nebraska, for example, a lack of appreciation of the need and advantages of an artificial water supply has resulted primarily in destitution and depopulation.

The densest populations of the world.

have been founded upon irrigation agriculture, but they irrigated only when they had to irrigate to live, and only then have they been aroused to a realization of the immense benefits, the profits accruing therefrom. Under the new order of things some of these abandoned homesteads are already becoming valuable. It will not be possible to irrigate all the plains country. Probably between fifteen and thirty per cent. of the area can be finally brought into successful agriculture. The irrigable per cent. varies from none on some divides to one hundred in some valleys.

Land values in the Arkansas and similar valleys having an abundant and reliable underflow are bound to advance, while the high lands without water must be devoted to alfalfa and cattle.

Alfalfa is a very deep rooting clover that responds handsomely to irrigation, and yet lives and produces fair crops where all other grasses fail-where water is at a premium. It is already being extensively and successfully grown even without irri

ALFALFA STACKS.

in upon unbroken lands by the square mile, but are being planted, subsoiled and watered, and are yielding surely and abundantly. A maximum crop beats a stinted crop. A maximum crop every year beats a fair crop occasionally, when the rain happens to fall just right.

Irrigation is the only insurance that provides against droughts, hot winds and frosts and that pays to the policy holder annually the full face of the policy and pump irrigation is the most reliable of all.

COST OF IRRIGATING VALLEY LANDS.

Millions of acres of valley lands now held at $5 to $12 an acre, having under them the most reliable of all inland water supplies, can be supplied with pumping plants at $5 to $10 an acre, and can be irrigated with an annual expense of $1 to $5 an acre (power, repairs and interest), and be made to pay ten per cent. net on $100 to $200 per acre, and often several times these figures. The pump irrigator is free from monopoly control of water, from canal and reservoir management and from the vexatious and costly delays resulting from water supply uncertainties and canal failures. He erects his own pump on his own premises, pumps his own water into his own reservoir, irrigates at his own pleasure, and does his own superintending and adjudicating.

While the millions of acres of high lands must be devoted mainly to alfalfa and cattle, the man who is fastened there by other business than farming can, by pumping water, grow at least the garden produce necessary for family consumption and perhaps sell some to his neighbors.

For each locality and for each size of farm in each locality there is but one style of plant, one kind of pump and power and one size of reservoir that results in the best capitalized pumping investment and, while the writer has been collecting and tabulating data on this subject from experiments and actual results on high and low lands for two and a half years, the relative merits of the various pumping plants is intentionally omitted from this article.

While the purchasers of high lands on the plains, "unsight and unseen," losers, I am convinced beyond question that lands in the Arkansas valley or any other valley having as reliable an underflow, are among the best investments in the country at present prices. They must be worth $50 to $100 an acre when supplied with pumps and people; and when the water supply and the cost and advantages of pump irrigation become better understood, the valleys will be continuous gardens, vineyards and orchards; the high lands will be pastures of native grass and alfalfa. In British India three million acres are irrigated with water pumped from wells. In the United States of America, and not alone upon the plains, pump irrigation is in its infancy.

[NOTE. The author requests us to state that the photo of the Waymire reservoir on page 190 and the reference thereto on page 186 were inserted by us without referring the matter to him.-ED.]