MARVELLOUS AMERICA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 301, 21 December 1907, Page 4

MARVELLOUS AMERICA.

IRRIGATION WORK. Some particulars of the marvellous work being carried out by the United j States of America ill connection with irrigation and reclamation are given by the American correspondent of the Wei- j lington "Dominion." Seeing that the | Government of this country is under- . taking extensive reclamation work in | the I'iako (Waikato), and last session j set aside a substantial amount of money for the irrigation of the waste lands of t Central Otago, the article is of value and interest to Xew Zealanders. It shows . what may be done by enterprise, ex- f pert knowledge, and capital. The ( writer says that within a few years the United States Government has en- . tered upon a task many times greater I j than building the Panama ('anal, and is , prepared to s|>cnd for land reclamation possibly a billion dollars of money, ft | is now engaged upon thirty-eight different projects in the Western States, which will require an expenditure of forty millions of dollars. By these works nearly seven million acres of fabulously rich lands will be opened for settlement, for there are no richer lands on the globe than desert lands when touched by the magie hands Without saying much about it, the Government is now carrying out some of the most colossal and daring enterprises of modern tinfes. The Reclamation Service is building two of the highest dams in the world. T t is boring the largest tunnel in the country. It is making a dam of masonry on a bed of sand." It is constructing a reservoir 1000 miles away from the lands its waters are to supply. It is transferring rivers from one waters!®! to another. carrying one river right aqfoss the Continental jjivide, so that its waters will ci'tcf the Gulf of Mexico instead of .Hudson Bay. It has built over a thousand miles of canals, its excavations already amounting to aliout one-fourth ■the estimated yardage of the Panama Ganal. It has in its employ a corps of skilled engineers and over ten thousand men. As fast as one project is completed another is undertaken. The story of the Service will form one of the romances of history. iirst in spectacular teatures stands the Shoshone project, which, when completed, will introduce the arts of peace in two hundred square miles of the Big Horn Basin, where now rove the outlaw 1 tribe of man and beast. The Shoshone dam, the highest in the world, will back up the waters of a wild torrent in a granite canyon liOOft deep. It is a solid piece of masonry, thicker than it is wide, and twice as high as it is thick, and fits into its site as a peg into a hole. Its height is 310 ft. The Roosevelt dam is forty feet lower than the Shoshone. It is part of an irrigation scheme to supply 2UU,UUU acres of an Arizona desert with water—a desert of the driest laud, the natives say, "between Death Valley and Hell." The tunnel referred to is to bring the waters of the Gunnison River in Colorado to the help of another river not sufficient to irrigate a very fertile valley in which most of the market eauteloupes are raised. The Gunnison flows through one of the wildest canyons in Colorado, and reaches scarcely ail acre of arable land, liy tunnelling a high ridge, the Vernal Mesa, for 30,000 ft, the useless Gunnison torrent will be diverted to the service of the valley folk. The Yuma project is the most peculiar of all. Yuma is on the Mexican border, and enjoys a genial summer heat of 120, and gets along on an annual rainfall of , 2'/«iu. With irrigation Yuma would be , for fruit and vegetables literally a fort-ing-l>cd, a vast unglazed hothouse. As ; it is, the date, the olive, the pineapple, i and the finest oranges in the country ; flourish. Yuma is on tlic Colorado, the ' dirtiest river in the country, making the •'muddy Missouri" limpid by contrast, but for this reason an excellent fertilising agent. On the flat delta lands of ■ the lower Colorado there is no site for ; a da in. What did the engineers do but i go halfway to Canada and make a reservoir for the storage of water to be used I for irrigation at lunia a thousand miles away! When these dams are finished, t the river that cuts the Grand Canyon, I the most sublime gorge in the Continent, will be but the outlet channel of > an irrigation reservoir. There is another I peculiar feature in the Y'uma project. [ The yellow broth that does duty for water in the lower Colorado is not even 1 fit for irrigation. To construct a reserl voir for the purpose of cleaning the . water of some of its silt, a sort of floating dam was devised—a flat sill of . masonry 207 ft wide and l!)ft high, which . rests upon the sand and dams the river , enough to produce a settling basin. Only ! the water of the top foot in this settling . basin is drawn off to the canals.

Kio Grande project comes as a .solution of a most complicated problem. The Kio Grande ir> a long, Hat river, as muddy as the Colorado, and Hows through three American States and into Mexico. The Mexicans were the first to use the river for irrigation. Then the Texans discovered its value, and art the river in its dry season is but a trickle through the sand, the Mexicans went dry. Then the people above took the water and Texan went dry. The farmers 011 the upper reaehes of the river finally were the only ones to profit by its \tse, and below them rich lands were lapsing into desert. Yet at iiood tide enough water for everyone ran useless to the sea. The Reclamation Service studied the situation and drew its plaus for pleasing all the .States aud settling the complication with Mexico. These plans involve the construction of an artificial lake in the State of New Mexico large enough to store the Hood waters of the upper streams. This lake will be forty miles long, the biggest construction ol the kind to be found anywhere—but no task is too gigantic for the Reclamation Service. In all the history of irrigation there is nothing more curious than tli<i Milk River project in Northern Montana. The Kio Grande created difficulty with Mexicoj the Milk River made strife with the Canadians, it is this way: The Milk River rises in Montana, near the double Continental divide —that is, at the watershed dividing north from south and east from west, it Hows into Canada, and back again into Montana, emptying into the Missouri, l*or many years the Montana farmers have been using the supply for irrigation. But latterly (lie Canadian ranchers have been diverting the greater part of the river for their own use. The problem was presented to the Reclamation Service. Near the head waters of Milk liiver ris.es another river, the St. Mary, but it turns northward down the other side of the and empties finally into Hudson Day. It is proposed to dam thp St. -Mary, back it* waters above its source, lead them in a canal across the Divide, and pour than into the Milk, the enlarged Milk giving water enough for both Canada and Montana. 'This project is now tin* subject of diplomatic negotiation- between the two Governments, in case Canada objects, the Service is ready with another plan, which is more curious than the other. Jn this plan the , entire St. Mary supply will bo diverted 1 into other channels and carried to the j lower .Milk Valley without touching I Canada. I

There are among the projects undertaken by the Reclamation Service, which ha» had an oliicial existence of less than five years. With a debonair indiircrence to the dillicultiea or magjiitude of the task, the Reclamation Service promises to find water for the irrigation of not le.-s than fifty million acres of what is now desert land. This means a tract the .size of New Zealand. Potentially desert lands are the most fertile lands ;on the globe. Without water they are :as barren as the high Himalayas. It will take a billion dollars to transform these desert jdaces into gardens—but Uncle Sam is still not too poor to face such expenditure. The peculiarity of tlieso irrigated land* is that their richness is Mich that live to forty acres are sufficient for the support of a family. In such place*, therefore, will grow np rural settlements uf the type of Redland" and Riverside, in California. These are essentially cities of farm*, having the advantages of both town and country, and permitting tlial independence 1 and play of individualism which is threatened by the merciless collectivism : of our industrial life. This Miggents (lift sociological side of the Reclamation Service. The (Government is now giving it" attention to the inland rivers, Xcxl will come (lie drainage of swamps and low lands, fu science, it in wul) to remember there nre no '"bad lands.*'