2.5. Read the text.

1. On the basis of word-building chains with the stem “practice” and “cooperate” try to define:

– who promoted and supervised agriculture on a large scale under irrigation in the U.S. Southwest;

– what made costs to the actual farmers prohibitive according to the 1902 Act..

2.6. Translate the text into Ukrainian: text a. Land reclamation in the usa.

1. Reclamation of land is a practice of converting unproductive land (e.g., desert or swamp wasteland) into arable land by such methods as irrigation, drainage, flood control, improvement of the texture and of the mineral and organic content of soil, and the checking of erosion.

2. In the United States all these methods have been widely used, but the chief government efforts have been directed towards reclamation by irrigation and by flood control.

3. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, agency set up in the Department of the Interior under the Reclamation Act of 1902, was at first called the Reclamation Service. Its purpose is to encourage and promote irrigation of lands in the arid and semi-arid regions of the West by examination, survey, and construction of irrigation works.

4. Irrigation in what is now the U.S. Southwest was practised by the Indians before the coming of the Spanish, and the Catholic missionaries there, and more particularly in California, supervised agriculture on a large scale under irrigation, but in the other regions its practical application was limited. Modern irrigation practices may, however, be said to have begun in 1847 with the Mormons in Utah.

5. In later years individuals and, more usually, groups undertook irrigation schemes in many arid spots of the entire West. By 1865 nearly 150,000 acres were under irrigation.

6. In the closing years of the 19^th century there were strong moves to gain governmental help for reclamation schemes. Thus, the state governors adopted the Carey Land Act (1894) intended for this purpose. The government’s main attention was focused sharply on conservation of natural resources, and reclamation was advocated for lands ruined by injudicious farming, grazing, and deforestation as well as for lands always subject to hardships of little rainfall.

7. The Reclamation Act of 1902, sometimes called the Newlands Act, provided in general that the Federal government in close cooperation with U.S. farmer’s association should plan and construct irrigation projects 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 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 and the idea of cooperating became highly questionable.

8. An investigation in 1913 uncovered bad conditions, and in 1914 the time for the water consumers 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 20s and early 30s. So, the amount of water to be consumed should have been revised, and in the public works programme under Franklin D.Roosevelt the reclamation programme was linked with projects for flood control and for the development and consumption of power.

9. Numerous ambitious projects were undertaken, and many were completed. Among them are the Bonneville Dam (with an enormous power project) and Grand Coulee Dam; the Central Valley project in California; the Colorado Big Thompson project, and the Missouri river basin project.

10. Reclamation has created much new wealth in the United States by turning areas that had formerly been wasteland into thriving agricultural and industrial communities.