The Secretary is authorized to give public notice of the lands irrigable under such project, and limit of area per entry, which limit shall represent the acreage which, in the opinion of the Secretary, may be reasonably required for the support of a family upon the reclaimed lands; and of the charges which shall be made per acre upon the entries, and upon lands in private ownership which may be irrigated by the waters of the irrigation works. The charges shall be determined with a view to returning to the reclamation fund the cost of construction and shall be apportioned equitably.
It is provided that in all construction work eight hours shall constitute a day's work and no Mongolian labor shall be employed (32 Stat., 389). No right to the use of water for land in private ownership shall be sold for a tract exceeding 160 acres to any one landowner. It is provided that the reclamation fund shall be used for the operation and maintenance of irrigation works and that when the payments required by the act are made for the major portion of the lands irrigated the management of these works shall pass to the landowners.
The Secretary of the Interior is authorized to acquire any rights or property for reclamation purposes by purchase or by condemnation under judicial process, and to pay from the reclamation fund sums needed for that purpose. Within thirty days, upon application of the Secretary of the Interior, the Attorney General of the United States shall institute condemnation proceedings. The Secretary of the Interior is authorized to make rules and regulations for carrying the provisions of the act into full force and effect.
In the seventeen years since the passage of the Reclamation Act the surveys, examinations, and construction authorized by it have proceeded, and to-day, according to the report of the Secretary of the Interior for 1919,[13]
the service is in a position to deliver water to about 1,600,000 acres of irrigable land, covered by crop census, of which about 1,120,000 acres are now being irrigated. Besides this storage water is delivered from permanent reservoirs under special contracts to about 950,000 acres more. The projects that have been undertaken have been planned to provide for an area of about 3,200,000 acres.