28 
LOSSES EROM CANALS BY SEEPAGE. 
and thus permit the deposit of silt. There are many places 
where the effect has been immediately shown. The water- 
soaked lands become dryer and land which had been im- 
passable became dry enough for passage and cultivation. 
So as silting lessens the seepage, on the other hand the re- 
removal of the silt coating may cause the leakage to be as 
great as ever. 
A case in point is the Greeley canal No. 3, as mentioned 
in Bulletin 33, pp. 49-50. When first built considerable 
damage was done from the rising of the ground waters and 
fiooding of cellars in some parts of the town. After a few 
years the cause of complaint disappeared, silt having filled 
the bottom of the canal. In 1895 sand was obtained for 
building purposes from the bottom of the ditch at the cross- 
ing of a ravine. The top layers of the ditch bottom were 
found to be partially cemented. Within a few months after 
water was again turned into the ditch complaint arose re- 
garding the influx of water in the town .cellars. When 
water was turned out of the canal, the water in the cellars 
began to go down within ten days and in three weeks had 
fallen 6 inches, and in two months 18 inches. A measure- 
ment made above and below the suspected point showed a 
loss of 5.06 sec. ft. in a distance of 760 feet, or equivalent to 
a depth of 30 feet per 24 hours over the surface covered by 
the canal. 
A drain sewer had been built by the City of Greeley to 
drain the region below this part of the town. It was stopped 
up at the time of the measurement, but v hile thus failing to 
remove the water, the loss from the canal was excessive as 
shown by comparison with the losses from other canals. 
The damage led to requests from the people in that part of 
town to correct the defects in the ditch. The city feared 
that an attempt to remedy the condition would be a confes- 
sion that it was to blame. In 1896 a team worked for part 
of a day in hauling in clay and puddling this section of the 
canal, and the complaint in 1896 and 1897 ^vas small.* 
In the case of the Fort Morgan canal, given in table 5, 
there is an opportunity to compare the losses from a chan- 
nel when freshly used, and after having been used for a 
year, silt presumably having settled. 
In 1895, the time of measurement, water had been 
turned into a new section two miles long for a couple of 
weeks. The loss was found to be 11.48 cu. ft. per second. 
* July 20, 1893, this portion was again measured and loss still is a depth of 
over 18 feet daily. 
