THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



103 



The Seventeenth National Irrigation Con- 

 Seventeenth gress is to be held at Spokane, Washing- 

 Irrigation ton, August 9th to 14th, 1909. 

 Congress. This gathering will be attended by from 

 four to five thousand accredited delegates, 

 and it is certain that with the publicity given, twenty- 

 five thousand people will be entertained in that de- 

 lightful city during the week of the meeting. Special 

 efforts will be made to induce people from the central 

 and eastern states to stop off at Spokane for a few 

 days en route to the Alaska- Yukon Exposition which 

 will be held in Seattle. 



THE IRRIGATION AGE will make its April edition 

 a special Irrigation Congress number of 120 pages of 

 finely illustrated matter concerning the northwest. 



All of the larger irrigation enterprises will be 

 written about and illustrated, and taken all in all, this 

 will be the most elaborate publication ever gotten out. 

 along irrigation lines. 



It is our impression that the various interests along 

 the lines leading to Spokane should carry an advertise- 

 ment in this number, which will contain an invitation 

 to visitors and delegates to the Congress to stop off 

 and investigate the possibilities of their respective 

 localities, both from an agricultural and commercial 

 point of view. 



The citizens of Inyo county, California, 

 WhyWasthe , , , ,,. ,. 



have asked this very pertinent question 

 Owens River , ,, ,, , , . , 



and the Reclamation Service people mav 

 Project ,. , ., , . , 



nnd it necessary to furnish a detailed 

 Abandoned? , , , , . 



reply at some early date. 



The records show that the abandonment was made 

 by the acting Secretary of the Interior during the 

 absence of the Secretary on a tour of inspection of the 

 varied projects. About the middle of July, 1907, a 

 few days before he started on this trip, the citizens of 

 Owens Valley forwarded to him a petition setting forth 

 their rights and praying for a hearing. In this petition 

 they conceded the justice of granting municipal water 

 to the city of Los Angeles under the act of April 16, 

 1906, which was an act to make provision for all 

 municipalities under the Keclamation Service. In the 

 petition the citizens set forth their claims to certain 

 storage rights and water appropriations which had 

 been turned over to the JReclamation Service officials 

 on the ground, at their urgent solicitation, including 

 a reserroir with a capacity of 200,000 acre feet; this 

 tender was made direct to the Reclamation Service in 

 Washington through the Hon. Francis G. Newlands of 

 Nevada, and this petition, along with several others 

 relative to the rights of these people have never been 

 acknowledged and no opportunity whatever has been 

 given the people of that valley to clearly set forth their 

 rights. 



During Secretary Garfield's trip, both at Reno 

 and Los Angeles, he was within a day's ride of the 

 Owens River Valley and two day's time would have 

 sufficed, so the citizens state, to have made a careful 

 inspection of this project and have given the citizens 

 an opportunity to be heard upon their petition. 



Evidence in the possession of the Owens River Val- 

 ley people shows that a pack train of the Geological 

 Survey at work in the Valley was sent to Independence 

 and remained there several days awaiting the arrival 

 of the party to carry them over the Kearsarge trail 

 into the Kings River country. 



About this time a rumor from Los Angeles indi- 

 cated that the project had been abandoned, but the 

 citizens refused to believe that such action would be 

 taken without granting them a hearing to which they 

 were entitled under the law and rules of the Depart- 

 ment. They made repeated efforts to get in touch with 

 the Secretary to arrange for a meeting. After the ex- 

 piration of eighteen days, and after the Secretary had 

 left for the East, official notice was received abandon- 

 ing the project. The letter shows that this action 

 was taken on July 12th; the letter of announcement 

 was written on July 22d and received in Owens Val- 

 ley July 27th. Subsequent to this action it has de- 

 veloped that the Acting Secretary is the same individual 

 who had been instrumental in preparing the Act of 

 June 30, 1906, in favor of the city of Los Angeles, 

 and that said Act as at first submitted to Congress 

 was prepared in his office. 



The citizens of Inyo County still refused to be- 

 lieve that Secretary Garfield was an intentional party 

 to such action. 



In order to fully comprehend what was thus care- 

 lessly thrown aside by the Reclamation Service, a gen- 

 eral glance over the situation will be necessary. 



The evidence shows that the investigation of the 

 Service covered only one-half of the water available for 

 reclamation, and even upon this basis the project was 

 declared feasible, and one of the largest and cheapest 

 in the west, and that upwards of 100,000 acres of gov- 

 ernment land would be made available to settlement in 

 addition to supplying the full needs of the patented 

 lands. 



The great basin of the Mono Lake watershed, which 

 lies adjoining the upper waters of Owens River, was, 

 it is stated, intentionally left out of the calculations 

 of all the engineers. Mono Lake is about two-thirds 

 the size of Owens Lake, but the rising of its levels for 

 the past twenty years proves that it receives nearly as 

 much water as the latter. The lake surface of the two 

 basins is approximately 140,000 acres. The known 

 evaporation and fluctuations of levels shows an annual 

 precipitation equivalent to from 750,000 to 1,000,000 

 acre feet. It is safe to say that the amount available 



