Evening star., 1946-01-27
Minerals
Continued From Page C-1)

and water and to agree to reseed
it in grass again.
Perhaps the most vital contribu-
ton of Indian lands to the war
effort was their large production of
crude oil, gas, natural gasoline, bu-
tame and propene. The value of
these products from 1912 through
l945 was estimated at $132 900, 900.
Also, the Quapaw reservation in
Oklahoma yielded 415,000 tons of
lead and s38 8,000, 900 worth of zinc
concentrates.
Irrigation Pays Dividends.
The long program of the Bureau
of Reclamation for making fertile
acres from semi-arid land paid big
dividends during the war, according
to the Interior Department report
On the 100000 acres to which the
bureau supplies water, some SAIL
100000 worth of food, forage and
fiber crops were raised in 1914 alone
an all-time record. Under the
urgent necessity of increasing food
production, the bureau since 194l
has enlarged the area it irrigates by
759 900 acres, of which 125 900 were
brought under irrigation during the
last year.
Two by-products of wartime
necessity will continue to be of great
value to the American people-the
intensive search by the Bureau of
Mines for new metallic ores and the
increased production of hydro
electric energy by facilities under
Federal control
In Idaho, for example, the bureau
discovered large deposits of tungsten,
one Of the critical materials in war.
This deposit alone produced more
than 100000 tons of tungsten ore.
THE wartime search for minerals
by the Bureau of Mines" the In
terror Department report points out,
resulted in the exploration in de-
tail OF more than 1000 individual
deposits and the addition to the
known reserves of the Nation of
more than 1000, 900 900 tons of ore.
Cream" of Ores Gone.
"The war hurried along the de-
|pletion of our mineral resources at
a rapid rate and the cream of the
Nations high-grade ores is now
gone. For this reason, the Bureau
|of Mines believes that the country
must now emphasize the utilization
of marginal mineral deposits and,
through mining and metallurgical
investigations establish improved
techniques that will make their
commercial exploitation possible"
The need for vast amounts of
hydroelectric power to refine ores,
turn factory wheels and perform
myriad other wartime tasks led to
a vast increase in the production of
electricity by Federal agencies.
In 1941. the Interior Department
points out, hydroelectric plants un-
der the control of the Bureau of
Reclamation had an installed Ca
pacity of $4,000 kilowatts. BY June
of last year this had been increased
nearly three-fold, or to 2,283 400
kilowatts.
The total output of power last
year from installations like Boulder
Dam, Grand Coulee Dam and others
was nearly 14,0oo, ,000,0 kilowatt-
hours, making the Reclamation
Bureau the largest single producer
of hydroelectric power in the world.
Development of the Grand Coulee-
Bonneville power plants, the In
terror Department points out, made
possible the vast war industry which
grew up along the Columbia River
in the State of Washington. This
system produced the power for
processing approximately third
|of the aluminium used in America S
vast military aircraft program and
also supplied large part of the
electricity used in the construction
and operation of the Hanford,
Wash, plant where much of the
work on the atomic bomb was
carried out.
TIL Southwest Power Administra-
ton, another Interior Department
agency which operates hydroelectric
plants at Pensacola, Norfolk and