The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1904-03-24
Government Irrigation.

The beneficent results Of the British
protectorate over Egypt are suggested
by the accomplishment of the great
dam for irrigating purposes at AS
souan, which has a storage capacity
of a billion tons Of Nile water, with
ample locking facilities for river
traffic, and will immensely increase
the agricultural productivity Of lower
Egypt. It is proposed to continue the
benehcent work Of simplifying the
supply of water for irrigating pur-
poses by the construction Of a great
storage reservoir in Lake Tsana, in
Abyssinia. which will also improve the
navigation Of the Blue Nile, and con-
,structing a storage reservoir at Lake
Albert Nyanza to supply the needs of
the jewellers on the Nile above
Khartoum. The irrigating works in
India are now constructing on a. large
scale, in view Of their .demonstrable
value as preventives Of death-dealing
famine.
The revival Of practical interest in
Irrigation, as a necessity in arid and
rsemiarid regions for plant growth, is a
feature of the growing intelligence
Of men who are now vastly improv-
ing upon the methods Of the ancient
irrigators, after scientific principles.
One of the greatest and most i'm
portant processes undertaken by our
own government is the work of re-
claiming a possible 200,000,O00 acres,
out of the 470,00O,000 acres of the
arid region in this country, for agri-
cultural operations. The government
has now wrought out it's plans to the
extent Of proceeding with the work in
Wyoming, Utah, where the Mormo ns
have. already changed the face of a
large portion of the state by irrigating
operations; in Arizona, California,
Idaho, Nevada, Kansas, Oregon and
Washington. Surveys are now in prog
ress predatory to the construction of
costly works for the utilization Of the
waters of the Colorado river, in south
eastern California; the utilization of
three rivers in Colorado, whose waters
now go to waste, and similar works
in the other states named, where land
Enow haracterlzable as desert, can be
made to blossom as the rose" Pri-
|lvate enterprise has already spent
millions in storage reservoirs in the
arid and semiarid region. In the Da-
kotas, artesian wells have been made to
do good service providing storage res
erveirs. One distributing reservoir in
Colorado, covering 705 acres, holds
$50. 100000, cubic feet of water, and
the : MERGED dam, in California, is
sixty feet high and covers $50 acres,
while the sweetwater dam, in that
state, is ninety feet high and the res
ervoirs covers 725 acres Of water.
Some dams hold water forty feet
deep and they are constructed of
solid masonry. -
Since congress has committed such
| work to the government engineers it
will steadily progress. No miracle OF
water-producing may be expected
but, slowly and persistently, arabic
and productive land for the people
Will be supplied where now food
plant growth is impossible. The irri-
eating ditch is the magical transform
Ling agent. Hand in hand with irri-
cation Games the necessity for forest
protection at the water sources, that
the rivers and creeks which make the
life-giving flow of water for plant
nutrition may be defended from the
hand of the human destroyer. Forest
blessings. The latter is impossible
without the former.