Mohave County miner and our mineral wealth., 1922-07-14
CAN THEY BEAT THE FEDERAL
 GOVERNMENT ON BOULDER DAM?

print with new fangled ideas of the 'better. way" to conserve its waters and provide millions of electric horse power for the industries that will be brought into being in the next thous- and years or so. If it is not Me Gregor it is Maxwell.
 The theory of states rights, coming as they do from men who heretofore denounced every theory of the rights of states to control anything, is one of the peculiar features of the inn broglio into which the daming of the Colorado river is drifting. States rights was one of the great issues with the southern states, but no re- publican would have anything to do with the theory and that party has roundly denounced these issues. Now, the men who are trying to put over the rights of the various states in the Colorado river waters are all repub- licans, and the states are republican. What caused the change? To us it would appear that all this propaganda is due to the Southern California Edi- son power company. It is this com pany that has set afoot all this hue and cry against federal control of the Colorado river, and for no other purpose than to grab it off them selves. They have given out the stuff that Glen Canyon is so large that you might dump the Colorado river into it for the next dozen years and it would not get rise out of it; that Boulder Canyon is but barrel to a tun alongside of it, and that if Bould- CT dam is built it will close the river for any other project, although the / two proposed damsites are 24O miles apart and have difference in eleva- tion of more than 5000 feet. But along comes A. P. Davis, director of the reclamation service, and gives the lie to all this propaganda. MT. Davis, who has engineering reports on the project that cannot be disputed, says that Boulder dam is the only poten- tial project on the river; that it will hold more water at given depth (60O feet) than Glenn Canyon dam; that it is sufficient for every purpose of power and irrigation; that it will hold all the flood and normal waters of the Colorado river for period of two years without allowing drop of water to flow in the river channel below the damsite that it has 50,0OO miles more watershed than Glenn Canyon; that it is 244 miles closer to the big source of power and water distribution, and from every angle it is the only place for dam. Glenn Canyon has no absolute control of the floodwaters from the Colorado river basin, because of the fact that the Lit tie Colorado, the Muddy and the Vir- gin rivers enters below Glenn Canyon, as well as an immense area that en- ters through canyons where there is no prevailing streams, but which dur ing the rainy season give off many thousands of acre feet of water that helps to swell the floods in the river. On the other hand Glenn Canyon is approximately 150 miles from the railroad and everything that goes in to the building of the dam will have to be hauled in. If rockfill dam is used, Boulder Canyon has just as po- tential site as the other place whence rocks can be blasted down into the depths, as the walls of Boulder are far higher than those inclosing Glenn Canyon. But no rockfill dam will ever pass muster in any of the canyons of the Colorado river, so that phase will have to be eliminated. Only dam that will safeguard and satisfy the people living below the dams will ever be used. William Mulholland, one of the best known engineers of the Pacific coast and who built the great acqueduct, said at meeting in Phoenix, where rockfill dams were largely discussed: God help the peo- pie who have to live in the valleys be- low dam of such construction" MT. Mulholland sensed the condition and stated plainly his views on it. It is only men of the type of A. G. Me Gregor, who is mechanical engineer; George H. Maxwell, who told Hoover he was not an engineer, but law yer; w. S. Norveil, who is a lawyer, and that class of people allied to them, who believe that a rockfill dam would fill the bill. To those who know this view is pure bunk, and they would not put itNinto print in pub lication that carries weight in the en- gineering field.
 And yet all these fellows have diff ferent ideas of who should build the dam. Maxwell pretends that the dam should be built by the government; McGregor gave forth half a dozen conjectures, at the meeting of the Col orado river commission in Phoenix, and then wound up his remarks by stating that he did not believe any of them would be acceptable to the peo- pie. And he was right. They were x-;,,,,l,, nro ;acts nf otrow Mr. NOr-