Arizona republican., 1913-06-22
DAM TAKES UP
 RIVERS LOAD
Salt and Verde Now Low and Roosevelt Water is Keeping Valley Green - Value of Water Bank is Well Shown

The Salt river at it's lowest in many years, and the acreage drawing water greater than ever before. the irrigation question right now is strictly up to the Roosevelt dam to solve. Since the system was first inaugurated and the first normal flow water was placed upon the fields, the supply has never been less. June sixteenth was the rec ord low day for normal flow in the Salt and Verde rivers at Granite Reef dam. This condition of affairs is not famiI- jar to all the people of the valley. AL though the daily reservoir and canal reports of The Arizona Republican are
 the source of information to a tremen- dous lot of interested farmers and business men, the report does not show on the surface all the facts. To one who has engineering experience the condition would be at once apparent, however.
 For the 1S0O00 or so acres in CuIti- vation in the valley, including the Tenn pc and Utah lands. there is river wa ter for less than 10000 acres. Yester- day there was appropriated for the north side lands. 46,S8O miners inches of water. Of this 5457 was normal flow water The sOuthside got 7,154 miners inches of normal flow and the rest reservoir.
 l. is q striking lesson in the worth of the reservoir. With only the rivers to depend upon, but one seventh of the land now green and productive would be reclaimed from the desert waste from which il was Wrcsted by the rec lamation service. Only small tracts of land along the Salt and some of the canals would be irrigated today and the rest of the great fertile Salt River valley would be like bone What would be the worth of the 140,O00 acres, be- reft of Water2 What is the worth of those acres today? The difference is the value of the Roosevelt dam in dol lars and cents and it amounts to mil lions of dollars.
 And the condition is not nearly seri- ous The ration mentioned above would if figured to it's greatest value, be vast lE more significant It is only the be- ginning of water shortage that would show the dams true worth, and now there is actually water enough in the river to supply partial heads for some of the canals.
 The water in the Salt yesterday due the north side would just about have supplied the Salt River canal, which runs through Phoenix. And that ditch was not running banks full by any means. The date on the water report is about 1879, which means that the present supply in the river was such as would have supplied the forty eight second feet to the quarter section for all lands in cultivation and drawing water in 1879. or about 10000 acres
 From 1879 to 1913 there is a progress to be noted, that is actually as well as mathematicary attributable to the wa ter supply behind the Roosevelt dam With nothing but the scant river sup ply to exist upon, this valley would not now be the greatest tract of irrigated land in the world. The little batch of figures that head The Republicans To- cal news column daily contains q mighty lesson in the value of a few million pounds of rock and cement ju- diCiOusly placed between two juttug crags on q certain river bottom about ninety miles out of Phoenix