Arizona republican., 1905-12-03

| enlarged until there was a current and volume there that the engineers after five successive attempts have been un-
 able to stop or divert. AnI just how
 this grinding out of the channel is done may be shown by more facts. l When MT. Wisner visited Yuma last | August he found $500 second feet of | water flowing by that city, just about
 the same volume that was flowing l there one year before But he was 1 somewhat startled to discover that the | bed of the river was two feet lower
 at Yuma than it was the year before. | The natural conclusion is that the cur | rent caused by the rush into the in-
 take below had already scraped two | feet off the bottom of the river as l far up as Yuma, twelve miles above 1 the intake. With a fall of 1G0 feet
 between the intake and Imperial, and
 a still greater fall between that point | and the Salton sea, one can scarcely I appreciate what the old river may do
 in few years in the way of digging | out its own bottom in the vicinity of | Yuma. It was these conditions that
 lessened MT. Wisner's surprise when
 he first heard the rumor which later
 proved untrue, that the Yuma bridge
 had been swept away in the recent | flood. He is predicting no such ca
 lamity and probably has no personal
 Knowledge of the foundations of the 1 bridge as that Is another mat ter and one in which he is
 not concerned personally. But if
 it has piling beneath its cement roun- dations as some bridges have. 1t is not | impossible that some day the bottom | may grind deep enough to loosen the | pillng and endanger the structure.
 But such floods as the last one. ap-
 proximating 90,000 secoud feet. are sure | to do a little business with the river bed under such conditions as exist The suggestion has been made by
 some one that even if the river con | tinues to flow into the Salton sea the | evaporation will equal its volume | Figures again prove the contrary.
 The area of the Salton sink at sea
 level is about 1,0OOO 900 acres. The an-
 nual evaporation fin those parts is about eight feet of water or a total l for the entire area of S,0O0,O0J acre
 seet Against that the annual average discharge of the Colorado river Is Il, 900, COO acre feet There would then be an annual gain of 100000 acre feet over any possible evaporation.
 In respect of how to prevent what seems at first thought to be the in eyitable, there are two or three pro- jects under way that will certainly prove of great benefit and many oth-
 CTS may be devised before there is
 wide disaster. Of those assured MT
 wisner makes particular mention of the Laguna project. When that Is
 completed and thousands of acres be- low 1t are brought under cultivation
 a vast amount of this water will be
 utilized. When the Roosevelt dam is
 completed a very large part of the
 water of the Gila river, one of the
 Colorado's main tributaries. will never
 get as far as Yuma. There are other storage projects contemplated on the
 tributaries of the Colorado that will
 further lessen it's volume and what
 may be the fruits of further study on
 the part of engineers no one can tell.
 The situation therefore, Is not all
 black for the Imperial country and
 there may be yet many ways Of pre-
 venting the thing that would result
 disastrously were nature left to her
 own devices.
 It is the judgment of those best post ed. that this is only a repetition of geo logical history There Is a legend among the Indians of southern Cali fornia that this same filling of the sink occurred about as long ago as the lives of four old men by which one might arrive at about $50 years ago. Mir Wisner says that on the inclined plain or shore of the present Salton sink have been found three fresh water beaches; that is three beaches believed to have been formed by fresh water for the reason that the shells found thre are the same as found in fresh water. This suggests three inundations be- fore the present one. The theory is that when the river fills the sink to water level or so high the current ceases. it begins to form bars across it's own pathway just as the Imperial country was originally formed, then gradually throws its current to the east finding a more rapidly receding eleva- tion toward the sea through what IS now the old river bed. Then when that is filled by bars or some artificial or other channel cuts in again from the west as it did in the construction of the Imperial canal. it again turns it's face to the westward with the Salton sea for it's destination. The movements of the river are of more than passing in- terest to engineers for the reason that it Is the only big river that within the memory of the present generation | has literally taken up its bed and | walked without at least scattering a | few of the blankets.