After 75 years of haphazard administration, the Department of the Interior has proposed "Reclamation Rules and Regulations for Acreage Limitations" to enforce basic provisions of the reclamation laws which are designed to foster creation of family-sized farms in areas irrigated by federal water projects.¹ The proposed regulations have been issued in response to a court order² requiring initiation of public rulemaking proceedings to develop criteria for ensuring enforcement of two important statutory provisions, §5 of the Reclamation Act of 1902³ and §46 of the Omnibus Adjustment Act of 1926.⁴ The goal of the regulations is implementation of the statutory requirements that ownership of land receiving water from federal irrigation projects be limited to 160 acres per person and that any "excess" land above this limit be sold at a price equivalent to its value absent the right to federal water. Since the proposed rules make major changes in existing policy while establishing methods for implementing some statutory requirements not previously enforced, substantial criticism and delaying litigation can be expected.

The successful effort to compel promulgation of these regulations rests on a lawsuit by National Land for People, a nonprofit California corporation composed of small farmers unable to buy excess lands because of past Bureau of Reclamation policies that enabled landowners in the Westlands Water District of the San Joaquin Valley to obtain holdings far in excess of 160 acres. On November 17, 1975, the organization filed a rulemaking petition before the Bureau of Reclamation seeking adoption of standards to prevent circumvention of the 160-acre limitation.⁵ The group specifically sought to compel adoption of procedures to prevent those practices previously approved by the Bureau that enabled landowners to circumvent major requirements of §5 while still retaining water project benefits. The organization criticized Bureau approval of "group" sales of excess lands through which several landowners were able to use corporate entities to gain acreage in excess of their individual limits by purchasing land under a single grant deed. In addition, the petitioners charged the Bureau with failure to enforce residency requirements and illegal approval of excess lands sales at prices which partially reflected enhanced value due to presence of publicly subsidized irrigation water.