J^Mffi) 



Vol. XII. 



AUGUST, 1906. 



No. 8 



NEWS AND NOTES 



Conference 

 of Engineers 



The Fourth Annual 

 Conference of the Engi- 

 neers of the U. S. Recla- 

 mation Service will be held at Boise, 

 Idaho, September 3 to 8, the Four- 

 teenth Irrigation Congress also being 

 in session at Boise at that time. 



This conference is in continuation of 

 the general policy of holding annually 

 a meeting of the principal engineers of 

 the Reclamation Service for the pur- 

 pose of discussing matters of adminis- 

 tration and economies of work. The 

 bringing together of these engineers 

 and prominent citizens of the West 

 make possible an interchange of views 

 and a discussion of data leading to re- 

 sults of very great value in the further- 

 ance of the purposes of the Reclama- 

 tion Act. 



Each of the engineers, experts and 

 specialists in various lines will submit 

 a brief paper embracing some point of 

 general interest, such as detailed meth- 

 ods of cost keeping, of designing, con- 

 struction, maintenance, or operation. 

 Owing to the advanced condition of 

 many of the irrigation projects now 

 under construction it is expected that 

 this conference will be of more thai* 

 usual interest and importance. 



Reclamation The U. S. Reclamation 

 D^ r T"j e Service recently passed 



ay its fourth birthday, and 



that it is a very vigorous infant is 

 shown by a .summary of the work 

 accomplished during its brief exist- 

 ence. 



Work is now under way on twenty- 

 two projects and 13,000 acres of land 

 have been actually irrigated. Up to 

 July 1st 241 miles of main canal, 116 

 miles of distributing system, and 388 

 miles of ditches had been constructed, 

 including dams, headworks, etc. Tun- 

 nels having a total length of more than 

 five and one-half miles have been 

 driven, including over two and one- 

 half miles of the great Gunnison tun- 

 nel in Colorado. More than 581 miles 

 of telephone lines have been installed 

 and are now in operation ; 233 miles 

 of wagon road, many miles of which 

 were cut in solid rock in almost in- 

 accessible canyons, no bridges, and 

 300 office and other buildings have 

 been constructed. 



The works above mentioned have 

 called for the excavation of 17,403,213 

 cubic yards of earth and rock, the 

 laying of 134,446 cubic yards of con- 

 crete, 124,901 square yards of rip rap 



