76 THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



A Practical Solution of the California Reclamation 



Problem 



In the San Francisco Chronicle of Sunday, August 

 11, 1907, there appeared an article entitled "Reclaiming 

 California's Netherlands." "Planning to Add Over 

 1,500,000 Fertile Acres to Wealth of State." "When 

 Drained This Land Is Said To Be Worth from $300 to 

 $500 Per Acre." 



This article treats particularly of the deplorable 

 condition existing today in the Sacramento and San 

 Joaquin valleys, where over one million five hundred 

 thousand acres of the richest agriculture land on the 

 face of the globe has been rendered almost or altogether 

 worthless, from the fact that it is either under water 

 all or part of the year, or is in constant danger of peri- 

 odic overflow. 



Naturally the problem of successfully reclaiming 

 these lands and rendering them permanently immune 

 from flood damage has for years been regarded as the 

 most important question before the people of California 

 and its legislative bodies. 



It is estimated that fully $20,000,000 have already 

 been expended in dredging, erecting levees and pumping 

 out diked areas; but it is admitted that this vast ex- 

 penditure has accomplished no lasting good, as the beds 

 of these rivers are continually filling up with debris 

 from the old hydraulic mining operations and the levee 

 of today has to be built higher and higher, with no 

 surety that next year's floods will not sweep it away 

 and devastate the land it is intended to protect. 



The people of California have at last awakened to 

 a realization of the fact that spasmodic levee and dike 

 building by local reclamation districts is worse than 

 useless; that the only practical, permanently successful 

 way to reclaim this wonderfully fertile empire is to take 

 it all in under one comprehensive plan and place it once 

 for all beyond the possibility of flood damage. 



How can this be done? Various plans have been 

 proposed by engineers, many of whom are of national 

 reputation. It is generally conceded that as an essen- 

 tial to successful reclamation the channels of the Sacra- 

 mento and San Joaquin Rivers and their main tribu- 

 taries must be restored to their original levels. As ttiis 

 can only be done by dredging, the cost of this class of 

 work by any of the proven devices heretofore in use has 

 alwasy acted as an insuperable bar. Then, again, suc- 

 cessful dredging would have to be on such a gigantic 

 scale that the disposal of the dirt dredged from the river 

 channels at once becomes a serious problem. There nas 

 always been a tendency to rely on the paternal aid of 

 the Federal Government, backed up by State appropria- 

 tions ; but the necessities of the situation involve the ex- 

 penditures of such immense sums that a proposition to 

 segregate such a large slice from the Rivers and Har- 

 bors Budget could not help exciting the antagonism of 

 the three hundred odd congressmen whose special baili- 

 wicks would be left out in the cold. 



State help in amounts large enough to do any real 

 permanent good could hardly be expected for a similar 

 reason. 



Therefore, it seems plain that the burden of the 

 cost of reclamation must be borne by those whose prop- 



erty will be directly benefited thereby, viz., the owners of 

 the fifteen hundred thousand acres of land in the Sacra- 

 mento and San Joaquin valleys which such reclamation 

 would forever make safe against possible flood damage. 



But as it would be an impossible task to get several 

 thousand owners to unanimously agree to the adoption 

 of any one plan irrespective of its real merits, it would 

 seem that the State itself must take the initiative and 

 by legislative enactment form one grand reclamation 

 district embracing the fifteen hundred thousand acres 

 which it is intended to benefit; authorizing the trustees 

 who will have charge of the reclamation work to issue 

 4 per cent bonds against the entire drainage district for 

 the cost of the work done as it progresses ; bonds to ma- 

 ture in 50 years, but to be subject to being retired at 

 end of any five-year period on due notice being given; 

 the State of California to guarantee payment of interest 

 on the bonds and to collect the taxes on the lands from 

 which the interest and the principal are to be paid. 



Such act should provide for the temporary con- 

 demnation of a strip of land one thousand feet wide on 

 each side of the river to be dredged outside of incor- 

 porated towns and cities, to which the debris taken from 

 the bed of the stream shall be transferred, and where 

 such debris does not contain a sufficient quality of veg- 

 etable loam to insure fertility, a top dressing of tule 

 mud shall be laid on the new made ground, which will 

 then be turned back to the original owner in prime con- 

 dition to be put under cultivation. 



Competent engineers estimate that to restore these 

 streams to their original levels, as they existed fifty 

 years ago, two hundred and fifty linear miles of channel 

 would have to be dredged and from each mile an average 

 of 3,000,000 cubic yards of debris must be elevated and 

 spread over the thousand foot strip on each side of the 

 channel. This will raise the banks of the river eight to 

 nine feet above present height and will cut down the 

 level of the stream itself twenty-four feet, a net gain 

 of about thirty-two or thirty-three feet, which will abun- 

 dantly take care of any future floods. 



To be effective, the work of dredging the entire two 

 hundred and fifty miles of river channel must be done 

 within a comparatively short period, say five years, in 

 order to put the reclaimed land in shape to be cropped, 

 and so earn a sure income that will not only pay the tax 

 levy, but also produce an additional revenue to the own- 

 ers. During the five years of unproductiveness the 

 State should advance the interest on the bond issue. 



The first question to be considered is the measure 

 of damages to which property owners would be entitled 

 for the temporary condemnation of the thousand foot 

 strip of land alongside the river. As they would only 

 be deprived of the use of this land for a short period 

 in no case exceeding five years and as it would be re- 

 . turned to them infinitely more valuable than when it 

 was given up, it would seem that in the great majority 

 of cases the obligation would be on the side of the prop- 

 erty owner and in any case would be limited to the 

 actual value of improvements destroyed. 



But the most important question to be considered 



