The La Jara chronicle. (La Jara, Conejos County, Colo.) 1896-19??, 1911-10-06

lily increase. C. +. Siebenthal
in water supply paper 240, page
ID, shows seven-tenths of a sec
ond foot runoff per square mile
of the Rio Grande basin above
Del Norte. This is the average
of Is years while the two highest
months of each year, May and
June, show runoff of less than
two cubic feet per second of time
for each square mile of catch
ment basin. The various engi-
neers who have examined and
reported on the duty of water in
the San Luis Valley put it at one
cubic foot of water per second
of time for each eighty acres. As
we have shown before there are
less than two square miles of
mountains to the west of us in
our catchment basins for each
square mile o. land to be irri-
gated from then. in the VALLEY.
On this basis taking the flood
months of May and June. with
two second feet of water from
each mountainous section and
twice as many mountainous SEE
tions as arabic valley sections
we will only have enough water
for four so acre tracts out of
each square mile or enough wat
er for 800 acres out of each $40
acres.
These facts and some more
equally as pertinent are why we
are urging you to build reser-
voirs to conserve flood water and
why we are constantly urging you
to make the best possible use of
your seepage water developed by
the drainage bitches.
There is another and very i'm
portant reason why the irrigation
and drainage districts formed
should be as large as the con
tour or physical conditions of
the country will permit 1t is
this: there are at present, during
the irrigation season, more than
one thousand second feet of wat
err poured onto the land by the
various bitches, between the Al
amosa and Rio Grande rivers, of
which very little finds its way
as seepage water into the Rio
urande. You may ask where
does it go? 1t evaporates from
our seepage and alllali lands of
this district. 1t is first poured
on our higher lying gravclly land
nearer the foothills and the bench
lands that extend out into the
valley. and from there it settles
down and spreads out onto the
lower lying lands where the sandy
surface soil is a thinner covering
over the adobe sheets below and
is thus forced to the surface
where it evaporates almost as rap
idly as it would from lake sur
face of water. OF the one million
acres that lie within the artes-
ian belt, probably over one
half is already water-logged and
rendered worthless by this sub
irrigation or seepage water and
will remain so until drained. while
the water that is thus destroying
the land is wholly lost in evapo-
ration. The fact of this immense
evaporation is proven by the
fact that the minimum flow of the
minimum months for the seven
years between 1899 and 1905 in
elusive, United States water sup
ply paper $40 shows the discharge
of the Rio Grande River at the
State bridge, which is below the
mouth of the COnejos, the La ia
ra and the Alamosa rivers, to be
less than 40 cubic feet per Sec
ond of time, or only an amount
which any twenty miles of seep-
age ditch in the proposed district
would develop. This 40 feet prob
ably does develop between Ala
mosa and the canon at Las Sau-
ces. Now if the seepage bitches
we have been advocating were
put in, $50 miles Of them, we
would develop during the irriga-
ton season and Immediately
thereafter, i. e., during the sum
mer and fall months, at least 500