History of Reclamation in the United States

While irrigation schemes were built in the Southwest before the coming of the Spanish, by the Catholic missions in California, and by Mormons in Utah by 1847, moves to gain government help for reclamation schemes began with the Carey Land Act (1894). Focusing on the conservation of natural resources during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, reclamation was advocated for lands ruined by injudicious farming, grazing, and deforestation as well as for lands with little rainfall.

The Reclamation Act of 1902 provided that the federal government should plan and construct irrigation projects using the proceeds of public land sales, and that the water users (usually organized in some type of cooperative) should liquidate the cost and purchase the irrigation works over a period of 10 years. The program was vigorously pushed by Secretary of the Interior Ethan Allen Hitchcock. Among the many projects started then were the Truckee-Carson project (see Newlands project) and the Salt River project (see Salt River valley). The 1902 act had an acreage-limitation provision, but it did not halt the process of speculation in lands to be irrigated, which made costs to the actual farmers prohibitive. In 1914 the period of time for the water users to pay for the project was lengthened to 20 years (later raised to 40 years).

Interest in reclamation quickened after terrible droughts in the late 1920s and early 30s, and in the public works program of the New Deal under Franklin D. Roosevelt the reclamation program was linked with projects for flood control and for the development of power. The Bureau of Reclamation began to work alongside the U.S. Army Engineers Corps in building dams and forwarding multipurpose projects. The Flood Control Act of 1944 broadened the powers of the federal government in these matters.

Reclamation has created much new wealth in the United States by turning areas that had formerly been arid into thriving agricultural and industrial communities. However, environmentalists have questioned and even stopped more recent projects, such as the Bureau's 1991 water project on the Colorado River, due to the damage to the environment such dam building has caused. The Columbia River complex has had to limit the amount of water diverted to safeguard spawning salmon, and the Omnibus Water Bill of 1992 limited the bureau to environmentally sound projects. Further, criticism that the bureau's programs have disproportionately aided large, rich farms led, in the 1992 bill, to the restriction of water subsidies to family farms.

Land-Use Policy

Since environmental problems arise largely from the way land is used, traditional land-use policy has come under challenge. Zoning regulations are one example of legal limitations on land use. Another is the common-law concept of nuisance, which places limits and responsibilities on the rights of ownership. On such grounds, pressure for land-use reform has sharply intensified since the 1960s. It is argued that as accessible land grows scarcer, its function becomes more critical, therefore choice of that function should no longer be dictated by private profit or local convenience. Moreover, local laws and zoning regulations are inadequate for settling land-use questions involving regions that cut across local boundaries, such as wetlands, shorelines, and floodplains, or large-scale facilities such as strip mines, sewer systems, power plants, and highways. As a consequence, environmentalists have gone to court to prevent or resite the construction of projects that would degrade the environment. Land-use court battles have been waged over the siting of jetports, petroleum refineries, offshore tanker depots and drilling rigs, nuclear power stations, high-voltage transmission lines, dams, and even shopping centers and housing developments. The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA), in its periodic inventory of natural resources, reported in 1999 that during the five-year period from 1992 to 1997 the nation's privately held forests, croplands, and wetlands were lost to development in and around cities and towns at twice the rate they were from 1982 to 1992.

The land-use policy of such public lands as the U.S. national parks and forests is a matter of continuing controversy. Under the control of the USDA, the policy is to protect the environment while permitting some commercial exploitation of renewable resources. Critics charge that the encouragement of tourism overutilizes already fragile ecological systems and that the USDA favors timber companies over preservation of old-growth forests. In the early 1990s the issue was starkly illustrated by the spotted owl, a threatened species whose habitat in old-growth forests under federal supervision was threatened by timber-cutting policies. One possible solution is to create a biosphere reserve, which provides a core area in which no disturbance to the ecosystem is permitted, a transition area in which experimental research is allowed, and a buffer zone that protects the biosphere from external development pressures.

Legislation

Legislative action has also been sought, with considerable success. The scope of legislation has expanded, as areas once considered of marginal value, such as the polar regions, temperate wetlands, and tropical rain forests, are included in environmental planning. Although varying in scope and stringency, land-use laws are now in force in most of the United States. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 requires that federal agencies file statements assessing the environmental impact of proposed projects (see environmental impact statement). Agencies such as the Army Corps of Engineers and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must now subject their land-use proposals to the Environmental Protection Agency and therefore to public scrutiny. This requirement, along with other legislation empowering citizens to sue industry and government for failure to comply with air pollution and water pollution standards, has profoundly affected land-use decisions. Although conservatives sometimes criticize legislation for the time-consuming and costly obligations it places on private business, environmental activists argue that the act promotes only a modest level of conservation.

See also public land; tenure; property.

Deliberate change in the way agricultural land is held or owned, the methods of its cultivation, or the relation of agriculture to the rest of the economy. The most common political objective of land reform is to abolish feudal or colonial forms of landownership, often by taking land away from large landowners and redistributing it to landless peasants. Other goals include improving the social status of peasants and coordinating agricultural production with industrialization programs. The earliest record of land reform is from 6th-century-BC Athens, where Solon abolished the debt system that forced peasants to mortgage their land and labour. The concentration of land in the hands of large landowners became the rule in the ancient world, however, and remained so through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The French Revolution brought land reform to France and established the small family farm as the cornerstone of French democracy. Serfdom was abolished throughout most of Europe in the 19th century. The Russian serfs were emancipated in 1861, and the Russian Revolution of 1917 introduced collectivization of agriculture. Land reform was instituted in a number of other countries where communists came to power, notably China. It remains a potent political issue in many parts of the world. Seealso absentee ownership.

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System by which land was held by tenants from lords. In England and France, the king was lord paramount and master of the realm. He granted land to his lords, who granted land to their vassals and so on down to the occupying tenant. Tenures were divided into free and unfree. Free tenure included tenure in chivalry, as in the case of knight service, and socage (tenure by agricultural service fixed in amount and kind). The main type of unfree tenancy was villenage, a limited form of servitude. Seealso feudalism, fief, landlord and tenant, manorialism.

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(1795–1814) Scheme to sell land in Georgia. After legislators were bribed to sell Georgia's western land claims around the Yazoo River to four land companies for $500,000, public anger forced a newly elected Georgia legislature to rescind the act (1796) and return the money. Much of the land had meanwhile been resold to third parties, who refused the money and maintained their claim to the property. The state ceded its claim to the U.S. in 1802. In 1810 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 1796 rescinding law was an unconstitutional infringement on a contract. By 1814 the U.S. government assumed possession of the territory and awarded the claimants over $4 million.

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Island (pop., 2007 est.: 491,666) and state, Australia. It is located off the southeastern corner of the continent and separated from it by Bass Strait; the state has an area of 26,410 sq mi (68,401 sq km) that also includes numerous smaller islands. Hobart is the capital. Originally inhabited by Australian Aboriginals, the island was explored and named Van Diemen's Land by Abel Janszoon Tasman in 1642. Taken by the British in the early 1800s and made a colony in 1825, it was used as an auxiliary penal settlement until the 1850s. It was granted self-government and renamed Tasmania in 1856; it became a state of the Australian Commonwealth in 1901. Chief economic activities include copper, zinc, lead, and silver mining; livestock raising, especially sheep for wool; and tourism. Several natural areas, collectively called the Tasman Wilderness, were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1982 (extended in 1989).

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Historical region, northern and western Canada, comprising the drainage basin of Hudson Bay. In 1670 it was granted by King Charles II to the Hudson's Bay Co. It was named after Prince Rupert, the king's cousin and the company's first governor. In 1869 the land became part of the Dominion of Canada.

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Devotional cult of the buddha Amitabha. It is one of the most popular forms of Mahayana Buddhism in East Asia today. Pure Land schools believe that rebirth in the Western Paradise (the Pure Land) is given to all those who invoke Amitabha's name with sincere devotion. In China the Pure Land cult can be traced back to the 4th century, when the scholar Huiyuan (333–416) formed a society of monks and laymen who meditated on the name of Amitabha. His successors systematized and spread the doctrine in the 6th–7th century. The Pure Land teaching was transmitted to Japan by monks of the Tiantai school.

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(born May 7, 1909, Bridgeport, Conn., U.S.—died March 1, 1991, Cambridge, Mass.) U.S. inventor and physicist. After briefly attending Harvard University, he cofounded the Land-Wheelwright Laboratories in Boston in 1932. Interested in light polarization, in 1932 he developed the polarizer (which he called the Polaroid J sheet), for which he envisioned numerous uses. By 1936, Land began to use types of Polaroid material in sunglasses and other optical devices. It was later used in camera filters and other optical equipment. In 1937 Land founded the Polaroid Corp. in Cambridge, Mass. In 1947 he demonstrated the revolutionary Polaroid Land Camera, which produced a finished print in 60 seconds; he introduced colour Polaroid film in 1963. His interest in light and colour resulted in a new theory of colour perception. He received more than 500 patents.

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Umbrella political organization representing the Palestinian people in their drive for a Palestinian state. It was formed in 1964 to centralize the leadership of various groups. After the Six-Day War of 1967, the PLO promoted a distinctively Palestinian agenda. In 1969 Yāsir aynArafāt, leader of Fatah, the PLO's largest faction, became its chairman. From the late 1960s the PLO engaged in guerrilla attacks on Israel from bases in Jordan, from which it was expelled in 1971. PLO headquarters moved to Lebanon. In 1974 aynArafāt advocated limiting PLO activity to direct attacks against Israel, and the Arab community recognized the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of all Palestinians. It was admitted to the Arab League in 1976. In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon and expelled PLO forces based there. In 1988 the PLO leadership, then based in Tunis, declared a Palestinian state and the following year elected aynArafāt its president. It also recognized Israel's right to exist, though several militant factions dissented. In 1993 Israel recognized the PLO by signing an agreement with it granting Palestinian self-rule in parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The PLO became an integral part of the Palestinian National Authority. Seealso Palestine; Lebanese civil war; Hsubdotamās; intifādsubdotah.

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Region, at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. It extends east to the Jordan River, north to the border between Israel and Lebanon, west to the Mediterranean, and south to the Negev desert, reaching the Gulf of Aqaba. The political status and geographic area designated by the term have changed considerably over the course of three millennia. The eastern boundary has been particularly fluid, often understood as lying east of the Jordan and extending at times to the edge of the Arabian Desert. A land of sharp contrasts, Palestine includes the Dead Sea, the lowest natural point of elevation on Earth, and mountain peaks higher than 2,000 ft (610 m) above sea level. In the 20th and 21st centuries it has been the object of conflicting claims by Jewish and Arab national movements. The region is sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Settled since early prehistoric times, mainly by Semitic groups, it was occupied in biblical times by the kingdoms of Israel, Judah, and Judaea. It was subsequently held by virtually every power of the Middle East, including the Assyrians, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, and Ottomans. It was governed by Britain under a League of Nations mandate from the end of World War I (1914–18) until 1948, when the State of Israel was proclaimed. Armies from Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, and Iraq attacked the next day. They were defeated by the Israeli army. See Israel, Jordan, West Bank, and Gaza Strip for the later history of the region.

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Archipelago, northeastern Barents Sea. Consisting of about 190 islands, it is the northernmost territory of Russia and the most northerly land of the Eastern Hemisphere. With a land area of about 6,229 sq mi (16,134 sq km), the islands comprise a series of lowland plateaus, 85percnt of which is ice-covered. The Arctic climate supports polar bears and the Arctic fox, with numerous bird species. The Soviet Union annexed the islands in 1926 and maintained permanent weather stations there.

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Region, northeastern Northern Territory, Australia. It extends south from Van Diemen Gulf to the Gulf of Carpentaria and Groote Eylandt. Never fully explored, it has a total area of about 37,000 sq mi (96,000 sq km) and contains important bauxite and uranium mines. Occupied by Australian Aborigines since the late Pleistocene, it was visited in 1623 by the Dutch explorer Jan Carstensz, who named it for his ship. The name now primarily refers to its large Aboriginal reserve.

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