What the NATIONAL FORESTS Mean to (he WATER USER 9 



included within the National Forests. Any influence that the Forests 



may exert on this water is therefore felt indirectly, but none the less surely, 



by the streams and by the harbors into which they flow. 



Ordinary drinking water may lack the romantic associations of some 



other beverages, but it nevertheless is an everyday necessity for thousands 



of families scattered on farms and ranches and in 



Domestic 

 numerous small settlements throughout the West and ^ , 



for the still larger population comprised in the towns 

 and cities. How much effort and money must be expended by western 

 cities in obtaining a pure and abundant water supply is shown by the 

 examples of Los Angeles and San Francisco, the first of which has con- 

 sidered it worth while to spend some $25,000,000 to bring water from 

 Owens Valley on the east side of the Sierras across 250 miles of desolate 

 and rugged country; while San Francisco is going back 190 miles into the 

 fastnesses of the Sierras at an estimated cost of $77,000,000 in order to 

 get its supply from the famous valley of the Hetch Hetchy. 



Some 732 western towns and cities, with an aggregate population of 

 2,265,000, depend on the National Forests for their domestic water supply. 

 This does not include, of course, ranches and small settlements equally 

 dependent on the Forests, nor the towns and cities securing their domes- 

 tic water from streams and underground supplies which are at some 

 distance from the Forests, but which rise from sources within them. 

 Denver, Colo., Salt Lake City, Utah, Los Angeles, Cal., and Portland, 

 Oreg., are conspicuous examples of large cities which are insured a pure 

 and abundant water supply by the National Forests. So important is 

 this function of the Forests that many communities have entered into 

 cooperative agreements with the Forest Service for the better protection 

 of the watersheds from which they get their supplies. 



Beneficial Effects of Forest Cover 



Perhaps the most obvious relation that exists between forests and 



water is the tendency of the tree cover to check erosion. The leaves and 



branches of the trees prevent the rain from beating . 



Lnecking 

 upon the soil as it does in the open; the cover which r 



y r troswn 



they afford delays the melting of snow in the spring; 



the upper layers of the forest soil act as an enormous sponge that absorbs 



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