estimated cost of reclassification must be advanced by the water users. For the purpose of obtaining the views of a committee familiar with irrigated farming, a majority of whose members are not directly connected with the Bureau of Reclamation, the Secretary selected Mr. William Peterson, director of extension service, Utah Agricultural College; Dr. Wilbur L. Powers, soil scientist, Oregon State College; and Mr. B. E. Hayden, project superintendent, Bureau of Reclamation, Klamath project, Oregon, to visit certain projects, study the economic and financial conditions and report to the Secretary. This committee did not start on investigations until after the close of the fiscal year, but will visit and submit reports on 11 Federal projects. There will probably be about 25 projects where readjustments will have to be made, most of which will have to be handled under the provisions of section 7.

This new legislation should obviate the necessity in the future of extending blanket moratoria on repayments, even under severely depressed conditions.

RELIEF EXTENDED TO WATER USERS

The act of May 31, 1939 (Public, No. 97, 76th Cong.) authorized the Secretary to extend relief to water users who were unable to pay, without great hardship, construction charges for the calendar year 1938 and prior years. Section 17 (b) of the Reclamation Project Act of 1939 extended the provisions of the act of May 31 whereby the Secretary could grant relief in the payment of construction charges for each of the years 1939 to 1943, inclusive. Pursuant to this authority the Secretary has granted relief in the payment of construction charges for 1939 to 17 districts amounting to $528,222.13. Approximately one-half of this sum is confined to two projects which heretofore have promptly paid their contract obligations, one being the Salt River project in Arizona where relief was granted because of a serious shortage in the water supply for 1939, and the other, the Imperial Irrigation District of California, where excessive rainfall and floods in September 1939 caused extensive damage to the canal system.

CROP RESULTS

The average value per acre in the calendar year 1939 of crops on Government reclamation projects was $37.06 which is 25 cents less than in 1938. There were some slight increases in the area in cultivation, from 3,040,695 in 1938 to 3,078,072 in 1939, but nearly all of the increase of 37,377 acres resulted from the addition of Burnt River and Stanfield projects in Oregon, and the Humboldt project

in Nevada, which appear in the crop tabulation for the first time and are carried in the column headed, "Projects furnished supplemental water." The Bureau was prepared to supply water to 3,889,540 acres in 1939, or an increase of 106,607 acres over 1938, chiefly owing to the completion of certain projects and extension of the canal system on other projects. The total value of crops on all projects was $114,082,794, an increase of $619,334 over 1938.

The water shortage on the Belle Fourche project in South Dakota continued through 1940 and less than half of the quantity required for the production of good crops was available for the cultivated acreage. The Salt River project in Arizona also experienced a water shortage but was able to come through the season by drawing on underground water which was pumped from wells and by making very careful use of the available supply.