Lower coast gazette., 1913-12-06
mouth Of the river.

der President Roosevelt's administration, but OF {
course only in a very moderate way. If hun
dreds Of millions of dollars of money were ex-
pended in this retention work there would be
vast areas occupied by water and this water by
a system of discharge gates could be utilized
first for irrigating the country and producing
crops on lands where none are now grown ana
secondly for the development of water power
with which enormous quantities Of electricity
could be generated and this electricity De trans
mitted to very considerable distances with IN
dustrial success. owing to the low cost OF Its
production. In fact it is suggested that the
whole scheme of the retention of the waters IS
a water rower scheme of which some monopoly
is endeavoring to secure the control and that
the irrigation side of it is only an incident to
give it political popularity.
Whether these statements be true or not,
they bear very little, in fact, we may say nave
no relation to the food waters OF the MISSISSIPPI
River that our levee system is intended to re-
sist. For the retained waters in these reser-
yoirs to be competent to develop water power
and to be competent to irrigate lands during the
summer season, they must be kept at a COM
paratively high level, or the irrigation facilities
and the water power facilities would not be
furnished. At this high level we may inquire
what is to be done with the flood waters that
come occasionally on top of these reservoirs, al
ready sufficiently full to do the irrigation and
water power work? The flood waters would
simply plate the contained waters with a new
surface FIVE or ten feet higher and if these
floods did not destroy the retaining walls the
floods would pass right on to the sea, right over
the retaining dams, right through the waste
weirs or spillways as though there were no
reservoirs there, the flood waters necessarily
under these artificial conditions occupying a
still higher %levelas they come from the melting
SHOWS of the mountains in the warm weather
and give us the high waters during the hrst
half Of the year. March, April and May are
our high water months and let us say that we
would like to have three feet lower water at
New Orleans, and, instead of II feet have the
eighteen feet limit only. If 81 feet at Cairo
would give us l8 feet at New Orleans, the river
fattening out necessarily in the lower end as it
approaches the sea, with the floods Of water in
the mountains how could we get one, two, three
or four feet less of water at st. Louis and
Cairo when all of these dams and retaining
walls had rigid heights, and were only prepared
to distribute water at lower levels for irrigation,
without means to retain the occasslonsl hood
water 1.-THE higher levels? II this vast mass
Of water was some solid substance, Eerhaps 1t
might be used or transported to places where it
was needed, but the waters of a continent cam
not be handled that way. We in the lower end
OF the river would find that the proposed water
would be made effective, otherwise the
Newlands bill would not have such earnest and
ardent advocates.
We may say in addition thereto that the
proposed irrigation schemes could be worked out
as they are already being in the same sections
of the mountain states, but these schemes
worked and are now all seing worked, for par.
ticular purposes, for which they were created
and not for the retention of abnormal water.
If it were proposed to hold back in the
mountains the waters that food US in March
April and May, any obstruction competent t.
do this would flood hundreds of thousands, OF
millions Of acres Of land and even then it woule
not be competent if there were exceptiona
floods falling on top Of the waters thus accum
ulated. TIE great dam in the river Nile at tn
first cataract at Assouan was built some sixt!
feet high, the result of which was that the ruins
of the ancient cities Of Thebas and Memphis
that were among the great curiosities Of tn
Egyptian world, have now become completed.
submerged, and the waters Of the Nile are he'll
back in Central Africa in the vast areas reach
ing back to the Mountains Of the Moon throug1
the various branches of the Nile, where tn
lands are unoccupied and thus far ct collpara
tively little value. The success Of that ventur
has led the British government to permit a
addition Of some twenty feet to the height 9
the great dam of Assouan and thus they arc er
deavoring to get a still larger amount Of water
the water held by this original dam being il
competent to give adequate irrigation to tn
Valley Of the Nile, which is only some fifteen {
twenty miles wide, and to do this it is apparen'
ly taking millions Of acres Of land, deeply sui
merged in water to give this water supply.