Excerpt from Irrigation Management: The Operation, Maintenance and Betterment of Works for Bringing Water to Agricultural Lands The irrigation manager and his assistants are comparing to be appreciated more and more as important factors in the successful growth of agriculture in the western part of the United States. Within the past few years innumerable irrigating canals, big and little, have been built, bringing water to many millions of acres, In planning these enterprises the chief thought and effort of those concerned was to build works to bring water to more lands. It was assumed that, when this was done, the areas thus reclaimed would be quickly utilized and that there would rapidly grow up a prosperous and contented population. This happy condition has not followed; we are beginning to see that the planning and building of irrigation works is only the beginning; possibly it is the easiest part of the problem of conservation and use of the resources of the arid and semi-arid regions. The really difficult and at times discouraging work is that of properly utilizing the irrigation systems after they are built and of getting fair returns from the irrigated lands. Thousands of intelligent, active men are concerned more or less directly in those operations having to do with the obtaining and distribution of water to the agricultural lands. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.