64 LAND DRAINAGE 



were put in operation that will drain a tract of 40,000 

 acres adjacent to and including a part of the city of New 

 Orleans. There are five of these pumps and together 

 they are said to lift 1,000,000 gallons of water a minute. 

 Such enterprises as this are but the children of those in- 

 augurated by the people of Holland in reclaiming the 

 lands of their country a century ago. The chief differ- 

 ence between parent and child lies in the wonderfully 

 greater efficiency of the centrifugal pumps now used as 

 compared with those used by the Hollanders at the 

 climax of their work. The draining of Harlem Lake in 

 Holland, liberated to agriculture over 44,000 acres of 

 land. The plans for the enterprise were adopted in 

 1839 ; the dike was completed in 1843 ; the actual work 

 of pumping began in May, 1849; the lake was dry in 

 July, 1852. The actual pumping time was nineteen and 

 one-half months and the actual water lifted was over 

 900,000,000 tons. The ditches were completed in 1856. 



91. How the expense of installing, operating and up- 

 keep is met. When the reclaimed delta lands are sold 

 to farmers, a price to the acre is charged for the land, 

 sufficient to cover the cost of installation. The ditching, 

 diking, and the cost of machinery may frequently be as 

 low as $25 an acre. Additional tile draining may be 

 found necessary later. The writer has seen large areas 

 of these lands functioning perfectly without drains other 

 than the systems above described. 



When a party purchases any number of acres in one 

 of these reclaimed units, he automatically becomes a 

 stock-holder in the drainage plant of the unit, with a 

 vote and a financial responsibility in its operation pro- 

 portional to the number of acres he owns within the 

 unit. 



