The record-union., 1895-04-05
SERIOUS CAUSE FOR ALARM.

Licenses have been issued to 112 hy-
draulic mines, and a large number Of
applications are made for which licenses
have not been granted. The tabulated
statement of the 1l2 mines includes an
exhibit of the number of cubic yards of
earth they propose to move. We shall
present this in full detail, with full tabu-
lated statement, in few days. In the
meantime we are prepared to say that the
declaration of the miuers themselves is
warrant for saying that they propose to
move earth enough to fill Suisun Bay
and raise the delta of the Sacramento and
San Joaquin Rivers to such an extent as
to make lake of all the country lying
between Antioch and the city of Stock
ton.
Few, if any, comprehend the magni-
tude of million cubic yards. A million
cubic yards will lay ?, 500 acres three feet
deep, or double its depth, it will lay two
square miles, SIX feet deep. under debris.
A million cubic yards. therefore. is
block of earth two miles long, one mile
wide and six feet high. The mines now
licensed propose to move sixty million
cubic yards; that would lay l20 square
miles six feet deep, which would be
region twelve miles long, ten miles wide
and six feet high-or, to lay it in blocks of
cubic yards, it will cover 24O sections of
land three feet deep.
If it were proposed to-day to turn the
result of an excavation, twelve miles
long, ten wide and six feet deep. to be
lodged in the mouths of the San Joaquin
and Sacramento Rivers, there is not
man in the United States so nearly
moral idiot as not to perceive that this
would be great wrong. and yet that is
exactly what the hydraulic miners pro-
pose to do. They propose to run into the
streams tributary to the Sacramento sixty
millions of cubic yards of earth, and they
propose to hold this earth back with
brush and log dams. Once in the stream
no Debris Commission can restrain it.
Once in the channels of the stream, it is
subject to the law of erosion which cut
these streams to their present BEDS
The list we shall publish in a few days
exhibits also the insubstantial character
of the works to be constructed. The very
recitation proves that they will not stand;
that high floods will wash them out, and
thus start the mountains in solution to-
ward the valley. The much-lauded Ca
minetti bill, which was heralded as a COM
promise between the property in the val
ley and the property of hydraulic miners,
has proven to be no compromise at all.
1t was simply an ingenious device for the
resumption of hydraulic mining, utterly
regardless of the rights and interests of
the people whose property is to be de-
stroyed by it.
One of the most pitiful and contempt
ible of all the pleas that are made for this
destruction is that it will destroy but
small value of property owned by the
people of the valley, while the taking out
of the gold in the mountains will enrich
the corporations owning the mines. The
raising of the delta Of the Sacramento
River will make all the basin from a
short distance below the town of Colusa
on the Sacramento, extending almost to
Davisville, covering vast area north of
the city of Sacramento between the
American and the Feather Rivers, in
Cluding the Feather River tule basin,
with all the low lying lands in the vicin-
ity of Biggs, and from Biggs to Yuba
City, including the cities of Sacramento
and Marysville, one vast lake. There is
no exaggeration in this statement. Sixty
million cubic yards of earth will build
Ievee across the mouth of the San
Joaquin, just as the Colorado River built
an arm across the Gulf of California and
left the great depression known as the
Salton Sea. The entire watershed of
the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys
flows into the ocean through the Straits
of Carquinez In the straits the outflow
of water is met by an incoming tide,
which makes at high tide slack water.
It is a water dam which meets The flood
waters of the Sacramento and San
Joaquin, ,4thus checking the outflow and