CIVIL ENGINEERING.

Progress, Volume II, Issue 6, 1 April 1907, Page 210

CIVIL ENGINEERING.

In the broad field of civil engineering the prevailing activity is nowhere more evident than in the construction of costly works connected with water supply, irrigation, and the opening up of artificial water ways. New York City has witnessed the completion of the great Croton Dam, with its capacity of 32 billion gallons of water. And other works have been begun which will give the city another 25 billion gallons in the Croton valley, 500 million in the Catskill basin, and 773 million in Jerome Park. The past year will be a notable one in the annals of irrigation, because of the vast system of works instituted by the government for the reclamation of the arid lands of the west. These works contemplate the construction of storage reservoirs which, in the size of their dams and the amount of water to be impounded, will form the most notable structures of their kind in the world. The Shoshone Dam will, be 240 feet in height above the bottom of the reservoir ; the Pathfinder 190 feet ; and the Roosevelt 230, while the respective storage capacit}^ of the three dams will be 19,863 million, 43,560 million, and 61,000 million cubic feet of water. Across the border in the Province of Alberta, Canada, the Canadian Pacific Railway has completed another huge irrigation project in which a valley 150 miles in length by forty miles in width is being brought under cultivation. This block of irrigated lands alone is estimated to have room for half a million people, and it is a significant fact that ninety per cent of the present settlers in the district are Americans.