Memorandum Concerning Meeting with Imperial Valley People

Confidential Memorandum: To Solicitor, from Associate Solicitor, Water & Power, "Meeting with Imperial Valley people regarding acreage limitation, " August 10, 1965, page 2(1) Whether we intended to accomplish the results we described; and (2) Whether we proposed to enforce the excess lands limitation elsehwere. Congressman Tunney and each of the members of the delegation commented that the acreage limitation was not observed to the limit elsewhere. They referred particularly to MWD and Coachella Valley. Mr. Tunney described corporation ownership and operation in Coachella Valley particularly. Mr. Benson attempted several times to argue the law. Mr. Rutherford stopped him, saying that that argument was not appropriate in this visit. Mr. Benson described himself as a recent law school graduate. He said that his grandfather had in the early 1920s owned 1,200 acres in Imperial Valley and that his father had built the farm up to 2,000 acres. He said that if he had to reduce his operation to 160 acres he would lose his livelihood. Secretary Udall agreed that farming had changed and that commercial farming in the Imperial Valley had evolved into the operation of great units requiring large amounts of capital. He suggested that it should be possible to preserve operation in large economic units within the framework of the acreage limitation law. He pointed out that lawyers in the Central Valley Project area in California had been extremely adroit in the development of new ownership arrangements. He added that those arrangements posed difficult questions of law. He did, however, add that any "family" arrangement would put an excess landowner "on third base." Mr. Rutherford commented that this was good information; that he could understand that the Department would not want some New York investment group to buy 100,000 acres and operate them as a unit, but that he thought family ownerships should be allowed. Mr. Elmore asked what assurance landowners would have that the Department would continue to approve in future years whatever rearrangement of land-ownership was approved now. During a short recess, I suggested to Mr. Carver in an aside that the Department might soon reach policy decisions in the multiple ownership problem area and that the Imperial people could then look at those decisions to see whether they were helpful. Mr. Carver said that the real problem was that these people could not on our not changing our minds at some future date. I agreed that we could not commit a future Secretary. We made no public answer to Mr. Elmore's query. 2Epson Perfection 4870 Photo, 400 dpi, 8 bit, 1,543,210 byte