Mohave County miner and our mineral wealth., 1922-06-23
WORLDS WORK RE: VIEWS COLORADO
 RIVER PROJECT

Says the Worlds Work for June:
 '"The Colorado River is one of the
 greatest undeveloped natural re-
 sources of the Nation. Water, cap
 able of generating six million electri-
 cal horsepower ,and of irrigating arid
 lands of an area greater than Mary
 land, now meanders to the sea without
 use by man. Steps are under way to
 bring this vast treasure into the ser
 vice of the people, harnessing a water
 power greater than Niagara's and
 making a garden of desert.
 An ancient English law has long
 hindered this development. This is
 the law of riparian rights" by which
 a man who owns property bounded by
 a stream owns to the middle of the
 stream, and by which no one may di- minish the natural flow of it's waters past his land. This law, perfectly adapted to land of normal rainfall, is an anomaly in desert. There, land is plentiful and water scarce; land is cheap and water priceless. The miners of California early compelled changes in the law to permit the di- version of water for sluicing, but they were compelled to return it some where to the original channel. For sixty years, the West has fought through the courts the issue of ri parian rights against the rights of di- version for irrigation, and to this day the Supreme Court has never found a formula on which it ventured to take a final stand. An endless warfare is. waged between men fifty miles from the source of stream, who wish to divert water for immediate irri- gation, against men a hundred miles from the source who demand that its waters shall pass their lands undi- unfinished. Within each state, these is- sues are usually roughly settled by local cohpacts which agree upon first, second, and third rights in certain quantities of water-through even there endless litigation continues.
 . The development of the Colorado River is complicated by this problem plus the problem arising from its pas sage through seven states. To the quarrel of Tom Jones with Will Smith, living ten miles apart in Arizona, is added the quarrel of New Mexico with California over the same issue of their several rightful shares. To resolve this difficulty, the Colorado River Commission has about completed an extraordinary task. It has negotiated an interstate treaty between Wyom- ing, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Ari zona, Nevada, and California, agree ing upon a common policy with re- spect to the use of the waters of the Colorado River for irrigation and cleo trlcal power. If Congress and the state legislatures accept this treaty, ! comprehensive plan of development should soon be under way.
 The Commissions engineers have already reported on the physical pos A site has been located in Boulder Canyon, between Arizona and Nevada, where the biggest dam in the world could be built--a dam twice as pig as any now in existence. It I would be 75O feet high, or just about he height of the Woolworth Tower n New York. It would create A basin so large that the entire flow of the 'iver for two years will be required to i'll it. This reservoir would supply water to irrigate millions of acres of i and and to generate millions of cleo 'rical horsepower. The latter could 'e economically transmitted to every important city from Denver to San Francisco and from Fl Paso to Butte"