INEW CANAL for DESERT to ~ ATER GREAT AREA O

THE NEW YORK TIM.ES, SUNDAY, APRIL 3, 1932. tip about one-eighth of its water, II WATERING A DESERT AREA I NEW CANAL FOR DESERT which will be put over a drop to generate power for that town, will pass through a siphon under the ;:;;;;;;~~·'~;;;;'·<';~';:;;:~.r.:..;;;~;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;E~;;;;;; TO ~ ATER GREAT AREA river from which it came, and come up on the Arizona side. There it will water many grapefruit orchards ~ Project Recently Approved in Connection With the that are already shipping their out- ~-:-~-::-::--7-:~: put to the Eastern markets. Hoover Dam Will Give Relief to Imperial Valley . A little further on that illague of engineering undertakings, the sand WASHINGTON. to 10,000 tons, drawing 20· feet of HE Feders:! Government is water. The flow of it will be equal hills of the desert, shifting about ready to start work on the to that of the Potomac River at with the wind currents, will be en- biggest irrigation canal in the Washington, twice that of the Rio countered. A ridge of earth whioh T stands here today as high as a house warld, destined to bring water Grande and three-fourths that of may have disappeared tomorrow and to the lowest, dryest and most tropi- the Hudson. It will, in fact, become the spot where it stood may have cal spot in continental United States, one of the outstanding streams of become a depression. Naturally o and to convert desert sands into the nation - a stream peculiar in there will be difficulty in putt:ing It. farming areas that, because of their that, Instead qf running to waste in canal through this area and keeping- peculiar geography, are different the sea, it will spread itself out on it clear. trQm any other. the land to breed luxuriant vegeta- When the main canal reaches a R(ly t-YJllan Wilbur, Secretary of tion where nothing grew before. point beyond the sand dunes a the Interior, gave his approval re- The government is to spend $34,- branch will strike out to the north, cently to the form of contract be- 000,000 in digging this canal. It is skdrting that great depression In tween Imperial and Coachella Val- the element in the Boulder Canyon Southern Californta that lies below leys in SoutherlJ. California and the project, authorized by Congress, that sea level and finds its lowest point ~overnz~ent far the construction of is second in importance only to Hoo- in Salton Sea. All of this area was the all-Amer icar; Qanal which is to ver Dam, 150 miles up the river. T}1e a part of the gulf until the Colorado use chiefly the waters of the Colo- government will spend the money, River long ago deposited sediment rado ~jver that are .•to be impounded but the owners of land irrigated that built a dike, cutting it off. when the Hoover 'Dam is completed must return it a Itttle at a. time far Thirty years ago a canal was taken four 0 -live years f~om now. forty years until it is all paid back. out of the Colorado :R~ver. It ran When this c nal-building job is Thus the government lends only its past Yuma and then, that it might credit to the undertaking. done ~ ditch will meander among avoid the sand dunes, crossed the the cactus-studded hills along the When Hoover Dam is completed Mexican Hne, meandered for Sixty Colorado, be siphoned under .the dry and is storing the flood waters of the miles through foreign territory and washes of the desert that sometimes Colorado River Basin that hereto- returned to the California side. This fore have been running to waste in carry roaring torrents, pick its way old canal, irrigating some 450,000 through areas of shifting sands, send this land of thirst, they will be re- acres, developed the area known as p out tentacles to enclose a body or leased as desired and will come roll- Imperial Valley. The position of the s desert land that lends itself to irri- ing down between the, parched hHls residents on these farms below sea " gation, and finally wind its!;)lf'around of Arizona on one side and of Cali- level has been precarious because s Salton Sea, lying 250 feet below the fornia on the other until they have the Colqra.do at flood-time has some- l' o level of the ocean. Altogether this reached a point fifteen miles above times grown to titande proportions; canal and its branches will be ap- Yuma, the hottest town in the United once since the settlements were 1 proximately 210 miles long. States. There a long, low weir dam made, in 1905, the river broke I: The canal will be 134 feet wide on costing $2,700,000 and resting only on through and poured over this area, t ,po the bottom, 200 feet wide at the the sand of the river bottom, will di- emptying itself into Salton Sea. Set- J J waterline and 22 feet deep. This vert the water into this man-made tIer. have lived dn the presence of a j '''at Irrigation Canal That Will Be Constructed to means that it could accommodate channels. menace which will not be removed I -ethe Waters ~f the ColoradoRiver. for purposes of navigation-ships up Opposite Yuma the canal will give until Hoover Dam stops the floods. 11.

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