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O(}2752 - 5- , government in water and related land resource dev"llopment. These Federal efforts must be continued. It appears that ,moves are underway to lessen the Federal effort, which could be detrimental to the entire country and disastrous to us here in the West. I would like to stress, I think it was two weeks ago tomorrow morning when the Governors of the Mountain States met with the Vice President of the United States -- and I have told Mr. Smith about this, sO he is well aware of my concern in this rega:rd-- so when the Vice P:resident, who is a very close friend of mine but who has had little connection with the West in the past, expressed the position which he said had been passed on to him by Secretary Hardin that we could afford to reduce the emphasis on reclamation in the West simply because more extensive methods of agriculture and more intensive. agriculture are available to us, to produce less on smaller acreage, and as you produce more on a small acreage, of course, you require less water. The Secretary of Agriculture had evidently told the Vice President, as he related the message to us, that the need for bringing new land under cultivation was not pressing at the present time. Of course, the Vice PresideJlt pro- ceeded to get about a thirty-minute lesson on reclamation in the West from four western governors. I hope that we convinced him that the bringing of neW land under cultivation was not the only, or even the principal, purpose of the expansion of our reclamation projects. ~~: " ,,<.Je.'~ ~.,",,''''~'~~~., I f!#f!.~ ~'''.''';W ..;-~i~~;~ . ..~.--;._<.:~. '. i.-,~C"',;:~ ..... I talked to Assistant Secretary Smith aboutthis on Friday and I suppose he hasn't been back to Washington yet, but he told me that he also' had contacted his friend, a native Nebraskan, co-citizen of Nebraska, the Secretary of Agriculture, and let him know how we feel about this, and that we do feel that we have many, maJlY reasons for increasing the water supply in the West, other than the bringing of new lands under cultivation. We, who represent the Western States Water Council, are concerned about the consequences of continuing to underevaluate the total benefits of water resou:rce projects. We are presently witnessing a slowdown in the construction timetable in many, many reclamation projects around the State, which are lagging badly due to the budgetary problems caused by the Vietnamese war. Now, we are not blind to the fact that, during a period of a budget cutback such as we have at the present time, our reclamation projects are going to suffer along with other improvement projects of a domestic nature that \~~;~t.~;~~:-~ ,. ~llt~~~!6~'W.lIil'l:41.I1!.~