Arizona republican., 1904-07-05
MUCH MONEY LOST
Stumbling in the Dark Af-
 ter irrigation
The Value of the Work of the Geo. logical Survey ;n a Quarter of a Century.

Washington, July A. (SpeciaD - When Abr2m s. Hewitt a represenia- tive from New York, made a spaech in congress supporting a bill to creste the geological survey, he dwelt little upon irrigation, but he prophesied the lar reaching good to be derived from an exhaustive survey of the Country's land and water resources. II never contemplate the reat maps of the United States which hang in these halls, he said, "or consider the mate rial resources Of this broad continent, without deep feeling of wonder. love | and praise"
 The creation of this government bu- reau twenty-five years ago, was the beginning of national irrigation. In fact it was the result of the inGomit- ! al ble efforts of the first American 10 1 forsee that the vast water and land re- | sources of the west must be develop q | hy the federal government. The early | geological rescaI ches of Major John w. Powell and his explorations Of the vast canyons of the Colorado and it's mighty | tributaries, from the continental divide 2,0GD miles to it's mouth in the gulf of i California, along with the explorations and Investigations of other srea! water | courses, led him tc assert a generation ago when American irrigation was in deed in its infancy, that a mGn!fest destiny awaited our great arid region ! and that the waters Of such great rV- CTS as the Colorado, the Columbia, the 1 Snake, the Sacramento and the Mis- EOurf would be, in time, controlled by the hand of man and made to support millions of people. The waters of riv- ] controlled hy ma ,, .~a raf ter for agriculture than are w.ld clouds. Major Powell was an explorer in the broadest sense. Of course u e Etupendous canyon of the Colorado was known to hunters and trs3uzrs years before he saw it. but his expe- dition was the first which oonquerc d | its rushing eddies and whirlpcols and and traversed it from source to mouth. His surveys and notes of its great 1 drainage area was the fist auth utic data compiled.
 And after Major Powell became the head of the geological survey it was his young men, organized into iield e-;- petitions for exploration and survey work which reduced the Great Ame ri . | can desert. mysteIious and terrifying, into a region of fnown and definite boundaries and possibilities. For this work congress appropriated over mil lion ard a quarter dollars prior to the passage of the national irrigation act. So that law, instead of finding a region unknown and uneXploited. which would require a decade of careful surveys and stream gauging before definite work could be undertaken, found buro a4 not only fully equipped but possessed of data and records which enable it 10 almost immediately proceed with the giant work of desert reclamation.
 The survey, through it's hydrosraphic branch, has recorded during the last
 fifteen years the flows of all the more important rive,l; for shorter periods of all the lesser tributaries of the many hundreds of streams finding their sources in the melting snows of the Rockies and the Sierras. The phys.c5 characteristics of the river basins have
 been studied and a vast amount ol
 data, has been accumulated from which it is possible to closely estimate the
 volume or run-off of each of the
 streams The survey has topographic.
 ally mapped in more or less detai! ] nearly a million square miles of inc
 area of the United States
 | Numerous problems have been solved
 Us tllC llN III clIIiSAS anu llIt NAeo
 neerS in their years of preparation foi
 the great government worlS-the Ques
 ton of perennial water supply O.
 storage and flood control, or eIos:OT
 and the silt and sediment carried IT
 streams, of forest protection, CT reser
 voir sites and irrigible lands.
 The perennial flow of most of the western streams has already been di- verted and utilized for the smaller ir-
 rigation works of individuals. Th> problem now confronting the govern ment is a different one. Every one Cl
 the large government works vii 1e
 quire expensive storage reservoirs, in-
 cluding immense dams and long tun
 nels. The flood water flow ofthese riv'
 CTS is usually torrential. Many stream:
 which during the dryest seasons are re
 duccd to mere rivulets or in some eases