The Salt River Project of Arizona: its organization and integration with the community.

Abstract

The Salt River Project is a large Southwestern water and power project created under the National Irrigation Act of 1902, This is a study of the adaptation of the Salt River Project to rapid urbanization. The population within the Salt River Reservoir District, which includes most of Phoenix, Arizona and eight other municipalities, has increased from 175,000 in 1940 to over 800,000 in 1967. This report discusses the laws and conventions embodied in the reclamation principle, which provides for the allocation of power revenues to reduce the cost of water to landowners. The magnithde of this transfer has been increasing with increased numbers of electric customers, increased electric customer usage and improved operating efficiency of the power system. For the water system the revenues from the power system have been adequate to make up for the increased cost of producing surface and ground water so that the water charges to water users have not followed the postwar price spiral, but have decreased. The changes which have occurred in the transfer of water from farm to urban uses are enumerated. This transfer has meant less use of Project water per acre and a lesser percentage of total potential water users using irrigation water in the urban situation, However, farm water use per acre has been increasing arid the net effect has been no change in the total Project water requirement. The Project has tended to accept the requirements of water users while adjusting its technical, economic, legal and social ability in order to continue the distribution of an adequate supply of low cost water, With the impact of increased numbers of urban residents since World War II, the Project has developed programs to educate and inform the urban public about its activities and objectives. The Project is faced with the decision as to what role the urban public is to take in the decision making process. A linked set of hypotheses has been developed to explain the Projects adaptation to urbanization. These hypotheses relate the variables distribution, need and position; advantage and technical, economic, legal and social ability; the change in position with increased numbers of participants in a social organization and homogeneity, personalization, disorganization, secularization and individualization. These hypotheses have been derived from Lenskits Power and Privilege, Weberts The Theory of Social and Economic Organization and "Class, Status and Party" in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, Wirth's "Urbanism as a Way of Life" and Redfield's The Folk Culture of Yucatan. From this linked set of hypotheses the effect of different degrees of disorganization, secularization and inclividualization can be assessed in relation to the change in the distribution of water with respect to position and the change in position in a social orgaiization with increased numbers of participants. The methods for the study derive from the suggestions of Redfield in The Little Community and the systems concept. A social system is delineated by components which are statuses, aggregates or groups, and their relation to one another. The effects of elements external to the system being analyzed must be recognized and the functioning to the system indicated. The data to describe a social system are: the technological, demographic and ecological situation; the relation between and within organizations; the relations of organizations to individuals, and individuals to organizations; the ideology; and changes which have occurred through time. These methods and hypotheses do not reveal all which is known about the Salt River Project. However, they are designed to reveal the nature of the Project's adaptation to a rapidly urbanizing cornmunity.