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THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



LARGE CANALS IN ARIZONA. 



BY G. M. FOWLEK. 



THE tendency of irrigation works in Arizona is 

 toward schemes of greater magnitude and in- 

 creased cost, including storage reservoirs in the 

 mountains, and water-tight dams at the point of diver- 

 sion, to save all the underflow. 



These larger systems are more economical, both in 

 amount of water delivered and in cost of maintenance, 

 than were the smaller ditches which are being super- 

 seded, and the results are beneficial to all concerned. 



As an instance, the water belonging to the Tempe 

 Canal Company, which heretofore has been diverted 

 from Salt River, at a point where the head of their 

 ditch was located, is now to be brought around through 

 the Mesa Consolidated Canal, which has its head 

 works several miles farther up the river, to a point 

 where the center body of water can be dropped over a 

 bluff thirty-five feet high. Here the Mesa Consoli- 

 dated Canal Company propose establishing an electric 

 power and pumping plant that will raise many hun- 

 dred inches of water out of the sand beds below on to 

 the mesa above, where it can be used for the purposes 

 of irrigation. Thus, with a little more capital in- 

 vested, the swift-flowing waters of the canals can be 

 made to do double duty, turning the wheels of mills 

 and factories before being distributed over the fields 

 of grass and grain. 



In the use of water, the progress has been toward 

 the smaller farm unit and a closer and more careful 

 system of irrigation. Special crops that pay are tak- 

 ing the place of former unprofitable productions, and 

 the resulting prosperity is to be seen on every hand. 



The future of the Salt River valley is a bright one. 

 It is pre-eminently a land of homes of healthy, pros- 

 perous, happy homes. To the newcomer it is an oasis 

 in the desert. After five hundred miles of barren 

 mountains and sandy plains, its green fields and cool 

 shades, its fruits and its flowers, its soft breezes and 

 sweet perfumed airs, all impress the visitor as being 

 something incomparably delicious and invitingly nice. 

 Phoenix is an enchantress, risen again, and nine-tenths 

 of those who come within the limits of her spell never 

 leave it again without regret. 



KANSAS CROPS. 



A. C. ROMIG. 



IT is eminently proper at the close of the harvest 

 season to take a retrospective view and summary 

 of results, which have not in all cases met our 

 expectation, but are, nevertheless, highly educational 

 and demonstrate the possibilities along the line of 

 irrigation. 



Where failures have occurred, the cause is easily 

 traced to a want of experimental knowledge and skill- 

 ful management; these are breaks that will be 

 mended another season. 



As to crop results, we have as high as 200 bushels 

 potatoes, 800 bushels onions, tomato vines twelve feet 

 high and yielding a ratio of 2000 bushels per acre, 

 celery of superior quality, measuring ten inches 

 around the bulb, strawberries of extraordinary size, 

 quality and yield, and other vegetables in pro- 

 portion. 



Our farmers are fully awake to the necessity and 



value of irrigation; they contemplate enlarging their 

 present plants, establishing new ones, and will 

 extend experiments to include cereals, orchards and 

 alfalfa. But for the impoverished condition of 

 farmers, resulting from four consecutive years of 

 crop shortage, an irrigation plant and oasis would 

 ornament nearly every farm, and windmills would 

 dot the prairies as they do the polders of Holland; 

 but for this consummation devoutly wished, we must 

 wait. 



The progress and development of irrigation is 

 seriously threatened by recent court decisions in this 

 State and Nebraska on the question of vested rights of 

 mills, giving to the miller precedence over the 

 irrigator in the use of water. This will affect us 

 along streams where mills exist, and may necessitate 

 the digging of large wells at a distance of ten, twenty 

 or thirty feet back from the shore, and using the 

 water as it percolates into the well in defiance of 

 vested rights, and to the confusion of the miller. 



Notwithstanding the above drawback, the friends of 

 irrigation are exceedingly hopeful, and feel that we 

 have reached a basis of permanent prosperity, and a 

 condition that will eliminate the dread nightmare of 

 drought and crop failure. 



DEVELOP THE UNDERFLOW. 



H. V. Hinckley of Topeka, Kansas, representative 

 of the American Society of Civil Engineers, speaking 

 on the subject of water supply, said that the greatest 

 drawback to irrigation development to-day is found 

 in the sad mistakes that have been made in previous 

 years from poor judgment and too often from poorer 

 motives. He urged that an engineer who would call 

 himself an irrigation engineer should first solve the 

 problems that nature has placed in front of him, and 

 then find only the bare, cold facts, keeping clear 

 from promoters " for revenue only," out of wild-cat 

 schemes and above interests in bond issues, keeping 

 up the proper standard of the profession. " Ability 

 to run a line of canal levels does not make a man a 

 competent engineer on irrigation problems," he said. 

 " Too many canals have been built and are now being 

 built, where the reliable water supply is not a canal 

 supply." 



He claimed that the United States Geological Sur- 

 vey is spending thousands of dollars annually in chas- 

 ing after the five per cent, of the rainfall that finally 

 runs away to sea. He said he would not criticise the 

 government for doing this important work, but he 

 would suggest the propriety of giving a little at- 

 tention to the other 95 per cent. " It makes a great 

 difference whether 'Arid America' shall eventually 

 sustain twenty million or a hundred and fifty million 

 people," he said, " and before we get through, the 

 utilization of the underflow by pumps and gravity 

 systems will be found to be the biggest factor in the 

 solution of the great problem. Thousands of in- 

 dividual pumping plants are already irrigating from 

 the underflow in Western Kansas alone. The city of 

 Denver uses thirty million gallons a day, delivered to 

 its pumping station by gravity from the Platte under- 

 flow, and the advantages of nature's subterranean 

 storage have not as yet fairly begun to be ap- 

 preciated." Albuquerque Citizen. 



The woman who laughs in her sleeve these days 

 must develop a loud tone or her efforts will be lost. 



