The Goodland republic. [volume] (Goodland, Kan.) 1891-1907, 1895-01-11
STORAGE OF STORM MATTERS
The Run-on Waters should Be saved
and Used.
PROF. HAYS ABLE SYMPOSIUM
Dams should Be Constructed to Hold the
Water that Fails During the Rainy
Season.

sources. One that viii be of great i'm
portance win be the run-of waters of
heavy storms and even Of lighter rains.
To do this reservoirs must be created
by making dams in draws and rayines.
I know that it is objected that west Of
the hundredth meridian where the irri-
cation is most needed, the rain requir-
ed to fill a reservoir is scarce. A man
in Mead county told me last spring
that he had made a reservoir by con
struoting dam on a water three years
ago and that it had not been filed
once. Such cases win occur, but if
that dam is allowed to go out Of repair
the rain which viii come sometime win
not be stopped for the farmers use.
It does rain, it sometimes rains
heavily, in the semi-arid region of
western Kanss the dams that are
properly constructed viii surely hold
water sometime. If lard is plowed deep
it will mostly retain ali the water that
falls upon it. But there are areas of
grass land that must remain as pasture
and there are slopes where other cir
cumstances forbid a pillow ever to come.
These areas and slopes will furnish
ruu-of water to the neighboring draws,
even with moderate rains, and in heavy
rains most of the water falling on them
will hurry down the gullies to the out
let into the larger valley, unless i'm
pounded in a dam. The writer SOM
time ago, by the courtesy of the OBJ
server at the signal station at Dodge
City, was permitted to look over the
rainfall re cords which have been kept
and we'll kept there for II years.
found on a somewhat cursOry sxamina-
ton two entries that bear upon this
subject. One was that 3.65 inches of
rain had fallen on one occasion in less
than y hours. The other that 325
inches had fallen in less than three
hours. 1t may be taken for granted
that in both of these cases more than
two inches ran off all but the most
sandy land. a run,of oE two inches
from a square mile is equivalent to a
foot of water on los acres. That is to
stay, the run-off of those two storms
from single square mile would have
provided two six-inch irrigatiohs for
over 200 hundred acres of land, if it
had been impounded by dams and used
within month or six weeks. An eight
acre reservoir u or Is feet deep would
have impounded that water. Eight
one acre reservoirs of the same depth
would have done it as we'll Such is a
case that might have been.
Such instances are not confined TO
Dodge City. At st. Francis in Chey-
enne county this last spring, there were
two rains each of over three inches,
which fell in a very short time so that
the sandy soil of that town could not
absorb it. The streets were the path
ways of torrents. The Republican river
became a broad sheet of waters two to
three feet deep upon its sandy bed.
Again on one of the last days of
April in this year of grace, 1894, the
peaceable dwellers on Big Creek in
Ellis county suddenly found that
stream getting out of its banks over
flowing the bottom lands. No rain had
fallen in Ellis county. A few days after
the date of the sudden rise l was in
Trego county and found myself in the
storm area the concentration of whose
waters had raised Big Creek. Within
that area a man Of some note in the
state-Ben Rich by name-keeps a rain
gauge. He had measured the rainfall,
81 inches in about three hours! 1t is
pretty sure that four inches of that
rain ran down the creek, down the
Smoky. down the Kaw, to help the Big
Muddy to flood the cellars in Kansas
City, to aid the Father of Waters in
creYassing the Ievees Of Louisiana !
estimated that that storm had averaged
that amount of precipitation over an
acre of 30 square miles and the four
inch run-of from that area was the
equivalent Of 6 800 acre feet Of water
three four-fnch or two six-inch irFiga-
lions for 6,4O0 acres of land. The slope
of the country is such, the structure of
the draws so favorable that fully four
ffths of that water might have been
impounded before it got more than a
few miles into Ellis county Five
hundred reservoirs of an acre each
might have had a share of that water.
Five hundred farms might have irri-
gated several acres on each. They did
not. The dams had not been built
Ben Rich irrigatss seven acres from a
windmill pump.
These examples must suffice to show
that water is TO be had from the sky
even In dry years in western Kansas il
We only take care of it when it comes