SOME NOTABLE 

 IRRIGATION c§ HYDRO-ELEC- 

 TRIC DEVELOPMENTS 



BY C. E. GRUNSKY 



President, American Engineering 

 Corporation, San Francisco 



THE water resources of the Pacific Slope are 

 of exceptional importance. The conservation 

 and use of the water obtainable from streams, 

 underground sources and lakes contribute in no 

 small degree to its prosperity. Vast developments 

 have resulted from irrigation. The light and power 

 so generously supplied and so widely distributed 

 often have their source hundreds of miles away, 

 where human ingenuity has converted the power 

 in the flowing water into electric energy and trans- 

 mitted it to far distant places of use. 



Such streams as the Columbia and the Willamette 

 in the North, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin 

 in California, and the Colorado River, between 

 California and Arizona, attracted attention first by 

 their navigability. But with the improvement of 

 other methods of transportation, some of these 

 streams, such as the Colorado, lost importance as 

 navigable waters but gained enormously, as popu- 

 lation grew, in importance for irrigation. 



Space will not permit enumeration of the many 

 successful irrigation enterprises in California or 

 the other Pacific Coast states. The visitor who 

 will stop off for a day or two in any irrigated 

 section can easily find local works of note. 



Underground Water Supply. — The extensive use 

 of water for irrigation from sub-surface sources 

 can not be noted here except to say that there is 

 a growing draft upon sub-surface waters with in- 

 genious artificial replenishment of sub-surface 

 sources, involving sometimes the spreading out of 

 the freshet flow over pervious areas that it may 

 find its way into the natural underground reservoirs. 

 So important has this matter become that Los An- 

 geles County, for example, is at work on a project 

 that will be of general benefit both in controlling 

 floods and in safeguarding and increasing the sub- 

 terranean supply of water. 



The Imperial Valley Irrigation System. — The 



Colorado River, commanding the depressed area 



now known as the Imperial Valley, has there made 



a phenomenal development possible. Several hun- 



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