In particular, the Act stipulates that the federal government can determine how water will be moved, diverted, retained (by dams and water towers, etc.) and transmitted in dry or arid lands. Introduced by Theodore Roosevelt, the Act is intended to make more dry land suitable for farming by creating federal oversight over the movement of water to irrigate those lands.

When the Act is enforced, it will privilege wealthy white landowners. Water access for Indigenous communities, immigrants, and poor farmers will be restricted. Additionally, large-scale agricultural irrigation projects will increase immigration, as workers from Mexico and across Asia come to help with the new agricultural industries. This will lead to an increase in xenophobia, as well as to the Chinese Exclusion Act and other xenophobic legal actions a few decades later.