THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER PROBLEM 25 



regard it as impossible, or, at least, highly impracticable; on the other 

 side, those who consider that it is not only feasible but at once the 

 only proper remedy. It is admitted by every one that the topography 

 of the country about the head-waters of the Mississippi system is espe- 

 cially well adapted to the construction of retention dams and reservoirs. 

 The arguments advanced against this plan, though admitting this con- 

 dition of favorable topography, maintain that sufficiently large reser- 

 voirs could not be constructed and made safe or, in other words, they 

 would, through danger of bursting, be a constant menace to the whole 

 valley below the retaining dam. Again it is argued that if this plan 

 were adopted, the building of reservoirs would have to be done on an 

 enormous scale, since destructive floods often result from local condi- 

 tions, such as a swollen tributary superimposed on an already swollen 

 river. This necessity for a widely extended system of reservoirs, it is 

 further claimed, would involve such tremendous expense as to make 

 the adoption of the plan impossible. Most of these supposed objections 

 are still based on a report made to congress nearly fifty years ago, and, 

 whether good or bad arguments then, there is no question that they do 

 not apply now. 



It is flying in the face of cold facts to contend any longer that 

 reservoirs to retain the flood waters can not be built, or not without 

 danger to the entire valley below. The Ohio floods of 1907, the most 

 disastrous for more than two decades, were due to an excess of water 

 estimated at 23,000,000,000 cubic feet. To hold every drop of that 

 excess discharge would have required a reservoir only a little more than 

 half as big as the Pathfinder irrigation storage reservoir on the North 

 Platte Eiver in Wyoming, or one third of the size of the reservoir in 

 the Salt Eiver project in Arizona. The Engle dam on the Eio Grande, 

 a hundred miles north of El Paso, Texas, will impound about 120,000,- 

 000,000 cubic feet of water, equal to one sixtieth of the total annual 

 discharge of the entire Mississippi system, or more than five times the 

 quantity of water causing the most destructive Ohio flood in a score 

 of years. These reservoirs are being built by the government at a cost 

 of about $4,000,000 for the Pathfinder dam, $5,300,000 for the Salt 

 Eiver project and $7,200,000 for the Eio Grande reservoir. Further- 

 more, it is expressly stated by the Eeclamation Service that the Wyoming 

 reservoir and the Engle dam will absolutely control the worst floods 

 which the North Platte and the Eio Grande have ever known, the latter 

 of these streams having been a notorious offender in flood damage. 

 The mere fact of being able to retain the flood waters in impounding 

 reservoirs can no longer be denied, nor can the claim of danger from 

 breaking dams be now advanced as a valid argument against this 

 system. This government is most assuredly not spending millions in 

 reclamation projects and encouraging thousands of people to take up 



