Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-02-01
THE RIVER PROBLEM.
The Boschke Dredger Plan Urged to I'M
prove the Sacramento.

The Boschke Dredger Plan Urged to I'M
prove the Sacramento.
A correspondent Of the San Francisco
Bulletin writes as follows on the subject of
improving the Sacramento river:
The newspapers of the State seem to
have exhausted themselves upon the sub
ject, and no one seems to yet know Just the
right thing to do or the right thing to think
about the matter. As early as last summer
the Chronicle had long and laborious arti-
Gle in its columns, accompanied by map
and diagrams, showing that the Mississippi
has on occasions left its channel and gone
wandering off in new ones; but it failed to
show that the Sacramento and its tribu-
taries are anything like the Father Of
Waters or that science has found remedy
to avert such disasters. Our present flood
recalls with great force the reports and
words of warning from Engineer A.
Boschke, late of the United States Engi-
neer Corps, that the Sacramento river has
been filling up on an average three feet in
the last thirty years.
"The editor of the Colusa Sun in one of
his editorials last summer says that any
one can see that the filings of the river
bends are very rapid. This is part of our
waterway We can see the made land on
the opposite side of the river from Colusa
lying on the river side OF the levee is
higher than the land on the other side of
the levee. All this building may equal
three feet in thirty years, or one foot in ten
years. People can learn to sleep in pow
der mill, and hence become careless to any
surroundings, bat if We look about Us we
will see that now is the time for action
1--WE can almost say the powder mill has
exploded, when we near the walls of dis
tress and know that many home has been
swept away by the cruel foods. But our
duty is to realize that in order to save the
Sacramento river to navigation and our
people from any more such deysstations, is
to have a large stern-wheel steam dredge
built, capable of digging LOCO or more
cubic yards of dirt an hour and removing
it TO either bank, thereby deepening the
river-bed and making a leyee at the same
time. General Boschke, the eminent en-
gineer whom we mentioned before, pro-
poses that the Government run this dredge
IN the interest OF navigation, and Msjor
Huer, OF the United States Engineer
Corps, and who has charge now of the
river Improvements, is thoroughly cogni-
zant of the plan, and thinks it an admira-
bic one.
lift is true that the filing of the channel
amounts to one foot in ten years across 800
feet Of river it would be 100 cubic yards to
The upper river we can say is about 100
miles long that ought to be kept clear fol-
navigation and food waters. This would
necessitste II 100000 cubic yards to be
cleared out every ten years, or 1.750 900
every year. The large dredger (Boschke
PATENT, described in Egeniag Bulletin of
September IS, 1889, would remove this
debris in less than four months; in fact, it
would remove 20S0 600 cubic yards in that
time. The expense of running it, made by
experienced dredging men, amounts to
about $3.50 per day, or $4,000 for four
months.
THE Strengthening and deI enirg of the
Lower Sacramento at Steamboat Slough
and strengthening of its levees near Saera-
mento can be done cheaper by taking out
sandbars by dredging and placing the same
on its banks, than any other method pro-
posed. Nature made the Sacramento river
the great natural drainage canal of the
upper country, and those interested and
having homes there ought TO see TO it that
she has her road bed or river bed made as
deep and wide as before hydraulic mining
filled it to her destruction and the sorrow OF
our people and State.