COLORADO RIVER BASIN

MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1925

UNITED STATES SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON IRRIGATION AND RECLAMATION,

Los Angeles, Calif.

The committee met, pursuant to call of the chairman, at 10 o'clock a. m., in the ball room of the Hotel Biltmore, Los Angeles, Calif., Senator Charles L. McNary presiding.

Present: Senators McNary (chairman), Johnson, Shortridge, Ashurst, Kendrick, Pittman, Oddie, Phipps, and Dill.

[Senate Resolution 320.

Sixty-eighth Congress, second session]

Resolved, That the Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation, or a duly authorized subcommittee thereof, is authorized to make a complete investigation with respect to proposed legislation relating to the protection and development of the Colorado River Basin. For the purposes of this resolution such committee or subcommittee is authorized to hold hearings prior to the beginning of the first regular session of the Sixty-ninth Congress, to sit and act at such times and places within the United States and to employ such clerical and stenographic assistants as it deems advisable. The cost of stenographic service to report such hearings shall not be in excess of 25 cents per hundred words. The committee or subcommittee is further authorized to send for persons and papers, to administer oaths, and to take testimony, and the expense attendant upon the work of the committee or subcommittee shall be paid for from the contingent fund of the Senate.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will be in order. Let there be quiet in the room. The committee desires to resume the hearings commenced last spring in Washington, involving a study of the Colorado River Basin project. In the early days of last session, Senator Shortridge, a member of the committee, proposed hearings be had upon the various plans that have been proposed for the development of this much-needed project. Agreeably thereto, hearings were had in December, and in pursuance thereof, on February 26 the chairman, acting for the committee, offered a resolution which was unanimously agreed to and accepted by the Senate, providing for the observation, study, and survey of the Colorado River project. As a result of this resolution, the committeemen are here to-day in large numbers, which I think is an indication of the interest the committee and Congress have in this great project. I want to comment the local committee for arranging the program so satisfactorily and logically, and I am sure it will add sequence and clarity to the proceedings. The chairman has the program before him detailing the subjects, also the time planned or outlined to be occupied by the respective speakers. I think we will follow that plan out religiously. I might say to the committee that the crossexamination, so far as possible, will be limited, including the remarks

1

of the speakers, so we will have before us a compact and orderly presentation of the matter by the various witnesses, and with that brief introductory statement, I shall now call upon Hon. John L. Bacon, mayor of San Diego, who will, on behalf of the Boulder Canyon Dam and All-American Canal project, make a brief statement. Do you desire to be seated, Mr. Bacon, or stand?

Mr. BACON. I think I shall prefer to stand.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN L. BACON, MAYOR OF THE CITY OF SAN DIEGO, CALIF.

Mr. BACON. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the Senate committee, I will try to observe the rule laid down by the Chair and reach my terminus at the proper time.

Perhaps at the cost of going too much into detail, I want to repeat just a few things that I believe are really common knowledge to everyone concerned who has had anything to do with this Boulder Canyon project. As you know, some few years ago an irrigation project was started in the Imperial Valley which has now grown to such an extent that practically half a million acres are under cultivation. At that time the pioneers who went into that valley brought water in, as was to be expected, on these lands, by the easiest route; that route carried the canal through which every drop of water comes into the valley, through a foreign-Mexican-canal. For some 50 or 60 miles the main canal lies down below the border.

Now, if we will step back a few hundred years in history and look at the map of this district as it was at that time, we find something like this. This is a map showing parts of the State of Nevada, Arizona, and California, and a portion of the land lying south of the Mexican-United States boundary line. It has only been a few hundred years since the ocean followed these lines here. The Gulf of California extended up over this red area, comprising what is now the Imperial Valley. The ocean extended back into the United States probably 75 miles. Every year the Colorado River as it washes down in its flood season brings down an immense quantity of silt. This silt is carried in suspension until it reaches the low flat lands lying approximately at the border line, and here the silt is dropped. Now, that silt has gradually built up a dam, damming off the Colorado from the ocean, and damming all portions of the United States from the ocean.

I think we can get some conception of the amount of silt that the river carries each year when we realize that the amount of silt brought down by that river every year, the average annual deposit is about equal to the amount of excavation that the American commission took out of the Panama Canal. Let me repeat that: There is almost as much dirt brought down this river every year as the Americans dug out of the Panama Canal.

Now, that dirt is dropped here and dams off, has dammed off the ocean from this low-lying area. The Salton Sea is to-day some 250 feet below the sea level. Practically every city in the Imperial Valley lies below the sea level. Under these old conditions every city and practically all the irrigated land in the Imperial Valley to-day would lie under the ocean.

Now, this damming process is continuing to-day with the result that the dirt thus brought down here is now forming another dam at the delta and the Colorado River is attempting to get back into its old bed, into its old basin, and fill up this old basin, following above the Salton Sea and below the sea level. So much for the history.

Now, these are the facts as they exist to-day: We have here this Colorado River. We have water brought from the Colorado River irrigating the Imperial Valley. We have every drop of that water about a mile this side of the Mexican border line, carried over into Mexico, flowing through Mexico for some 50 or 60 miles, better shown, perhaps, on this map here, carried down along this canal and then brought down onto the American side. We have here a sort of a delta, a delta which is now confined in area by a series of dikes. The Colorado, such waste water as comes down here in floods, is now flowing down this stream, depositing its dirt on this delta and then flowing into the Gulf of California. Any United States map which you can get to-day will show the Colorado River as a fairly well-defined stream, meandering around here into the Gulf. But that river has ceased to exist at this point on account of the dirt that has been deposited there and is working over this way. At one time there was a great lake in here, known as Volcanic Lake. The first effort was the construction of a dike to keep that from flowing back into the valley.

All that keeps the water out of Imperial Valley is a bank of mud so soft that I have seen it tip right over and sink, because there wasn't enough strength in that soft mud to hold the water back. Some idea can be obtained by looking at this map here, which is a comparatively recent one, showing the flow of the water of the river and showing how it spreads out on the flat land. All of that silt, of course, is not deposited there. Some of it goes down in that canal in suspension, with the result that the banks of the canals are being built up, and this waste taken out of the canal in order to keep a sufficient stream bed there to take care of the water. This dirt being deposited there on the land is commencing to be a serious matter, because it is hard to keep it up. Roughly, the bed of the Colorado in this area here is rising at the rate of 1 foot a year, the dirt built up on that delta. One year is not such a menace, but when you commence to multiply that year by 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, etc., and realize that perhaps 10 years from now this bed will be up 10 feet higher, you realize that the Colorado is eventually going to flow back into this prehistoric basin here and fill up Imperial Valley. The longest life that I have heard given to the Imperial Valley is 17 years. In other words, there seems to be an engineering possibility of keeping the water out of Imperial Valley for not over 17 years.

I have heard that there is a possibility that next summer's flood might be so great as to break the dikes and inundate the Imperial Valley. The result is inevitable. It will be filled up in spite of anything that can be done. We may have one of the greatest national disasters on our hands here that this Nation has ever had visited on it. The Imperial Valley people, after this land was under irrigation, realized that they were facing a very serious problem. The problem was twofold: During certain parts of the summer, after the snows had melted in the Colorado, there was a very great dearth of

water. There was not enough water to supply the lands under irrigation. In the face of that fact there was an agreement with the Mexican Government, under which this canal was built by which the Mexican interests took out one foot of water flowing in the canal for every foot taken out on the American side. Under the terms of this agreement it will work out in such a way that if the Imperial Valley people desire to place 1,000 extra acres of land under irrigation on the American side, they must provide for the irrigation of 1,000 acres on the Mexican side. For every acre of land that is developed up in this Imperial Valley water must be supplied for an additional acre on the Mexican side under the terms of that agreement.

The burden of the responsibility of keeping up these canals, keeping the canals open and supplying the water, rests with the American farmer, and the Mexican gets the benefit, because they must be benefited in exactly the same proportion as the water is developed on the other side. Then, on top of that, when the snows melt in the Colorado River, in the summer there is a great rush of water, which amounts, in round numbers, to somewhere around 200,000 secondfeet. There is actually required for irrigation in the neighborhood of 6,000 second-feet.

The river sometimes goes down to 2,000 second-feet. In other words, we have a condition in some seasons of the year when we have more than we can use and others when we have not enough water to provide for irrigation. On top of that is the silt matter, which I have explained. The situation is getting serious. When the dikes were built they were only temporary expedients, and they were hard to control, and an appeal was sent to the Government, and they sent out what was probably the ablest board of engineers that could be obtained. The report was made. We did not ask for this with the idea of carrying out somebody's pet idea not to put over some propaganda but to get help in the practical solution of a serious problem. That report was made and is contained in what is popularly known as Senate Document No. 142. This was a document called the Problems of the Imperial Valley and Vicinity and presented to the Sixty-seventh Congress, and is known as the Fall-Davis report. You might call it the Bible of the Colorado River. The recommendations of that report were that the Government should go up to a point, roughly, at the point where Nevada and Arizona and California come together-not quite there, but a little above it, at what was known as Boulder or Black Canyon. It is practically the same. The recommendation was that they go to this point and put in an immense dam, a dam large enough to control the yearly flood of the Colorado River, and from that dam should be sent down an even flow of water all the year around. It would then have the effect of settling out the slit and controlling the water, getting an even flow for irrigation.

It also has immense power possibilities, power possibilities which have proved so practical since that the fight has come to be really between control by the Government and control by public utilities corporations. I will touch on that point a little more in detail. later.

Now, to complicate this question still further, the question of the allocation of distribution of the entire amount of water in the Colo