THE WATER DEVELOPMENT IN 

 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. 



ADDRESS BY T. S. VAX DYKE AT FARMERS 'INSTI- 

 TUTE, BURBANK, CAL. MARCH 29th. 



The coming summer will see more water development south of 

 Tehachipi than any two seasons of the past. Much of it will be solid 

 and permanent addition to the resources of the section. Much more 

 will be of merely temporary benefit but still well worth what it cost. 

 Considerable more will represent disappointment either sooner or 

 later. How to avoid loss of tune and money is the principal question 

 that is of much practical value and is also the hardest question to 

 answer. 



From the time when our mountains were several feet higher 

 and the streams leading from their bases were several hundred feet 

 below the present level of the wash and drift that has formed the soil 

 of the valleys and slopes the streams have shifted their channels so 

 many times that it is quite impossible to tell where they now are or 

 what their number. Many are miles from the present bed of the 

 stream while the chances are against any of them being exactly 

 under the present bed because the range of most of the streams from 

 side to side has been so wide. 



Equally impossible is it to say how large they are or what the 

 amount of water they carry or how long it will take it to run out if 

 heavily drawn on. Some one has had the audacity to frame a 

 formula for computing the flow of water under ground. But there is 

 nothing in hydraulic engineering that justifies anything of the sort. 

 In the dozens and even hundreds of old channels that the shifting of 

 the streams and covering of the old beds with drift have made, the 

 gravel or sand through which the water is now flowing, between two lay 

 ers of clay or concrete, varies so much in the size of the grains, ia the 

 amount of fine material laying between the grains, as well as the 

 character of the inlet and outlet to the sea that nothing approaching 

 a rule should be given even if we knew the size of the channel and its 

 exact slope. In short, the only way to develop water is to develop it. 



There are however, certain principles to be borne in mind or 

 you may find trouble ahead though it may not be immediate. First, 

 all development is 



DRAWING ON A RESERVOIR. 



If vou have an artesian well or one in which vour water rises 



