this might be done, and the plan which I have outlined here is only a suggestion; the ultimate plan, if carried out, may be something entirely different.

Now, San Diego County watersheds produce a large run-off, but on account of the immense storage necessary to control it we lose a great deal of this water; and in studying this diagram, I have found that the regulated flow from the present reservoirs was about 52,000 acre-feet of water, an acre-foot of water being the quantity of water which covers an acre one foot deep, or about a third of a million gallons, for those who are used to figuring it that way.

Now, in studying the ultimate possibilities of the San Diego County streams, is appeared that the economical limit would probably be reached when the flow from 1905 to 1914 was developed with sufficient storage to carry it over the long period of dry years. This would give us 106,000 acre-feet of water regulated flow, from which, of course, evaporation must be deducted, which is usually about 50 per cent of the regulated flow. And the required storage capacity would be 800,000 acre-feet, or nearly three times the present storage capacity, nearly double our present safe yield.

Some engineers are inclined to believe that the peaks of these tremenndous floods could be conserved, and in following that line of thought it appeared that regulated flow would be 117,000 acrefeet and the required storage capacity would be 1,050,000 acre-feet, three and one-half times our present storage, and we would get just a trifle over two times the safe yield.

It is apparent that the future development of San Diego is going to be very expensive. The expense, of course, would not matter if we had an unlimited supply of water available.

The possibility of bringing the water from the Colorado River through to San Diego would enable this community to draw on their present reservoir system in years of extreme floods and almost to the capacity of the reservoirs, holding in reserve probably about one year's supply and only bringing the water from the Colorado River when necessary to supplement our supply in years in which the ordinary run-off would not produce sufficient water. In following this investigation it was apparent that while we would necessarily have to make a large diversion of 200 to 300 second-feet of water in the Colorado River, that only about one-half of that would be brought over during a period of years, that by using our reservoirs to their limit capacity, supplementing the supply from the Colorado River, we would reduce our evaporation losses to such an extent that our present safe yield would automatically, without the construction of any other reservoir except possibly the El Captain and a few regulating reservoirs, would be increased about three times the present safe yield. This, of course, would be with the possibility of bringing water through the mountains to supplement the dry

years.

In order to give you come idea of the relative size of our little proj ct here, compared to the Colorado River development, I want to call your attention to the marine watershed from which we are drawing nearly all of our safe yield-it has an area of 250 square miles, approximately. This area, our entire watershed from

COLORADO RIVER BASIN

which we draw our water, is about equal to the area which will be flooded under the proposed Boulder Dam. The distance of San Diego along the river courses back to the mountains is probably two-thirds of the length of Boulder Dam Reservoir. I believe Boulder Dam Reservoir, when built, will be approximately 100 miles long up the Colorado River, and also another 100 miles long up the Virgin River in Nevada. San Diego, as I said before, has been struggling for years trying to develop what small amount of water they can from their irrigated streams in this region, and we are at present overdrawing the safe yield of our streams about 25 per cent, I should judge. The safe yield of the present city system is rated at 10,000,000 gallons a day. We have an additional 3,000,000 gallons a day contracted from the system, which, by the way, San Diego City recently bought, thereby making a total of 13,000,000 gallons a day. Last year the average use of the city was 14,000,000 gallons a day, and this year there is a possibilty that it may be 15,000,000 or 16,000,000 gallons a day. In other words, we are overdrawing our safe yield, and even with the proposed El Capitan Dam completed, which may be some time in the future, we will then only have sufficient water for the present population, with a very slight increase. And the city is growing at a very fast rate; it is estimated that it has almost doubled in the last five or six years, and if this rate keeps up, within 10 or 15 years at the most, San Diego, will probably have reached the limit of all its water supply that can be developed in the immediate surrounding country. And in doing this it not only becomes necessary to take the water from the various branch interests around the country which can develop the water more cheaply than the city, but that would result in a great deal of litigation which, with a safe water supply here of possibly 150,000,000 gallons a day for the city and combined surrounding region, there is no reason why San Diego cannot build up into one of the most beautiful cities in the country. And the only way this can be done is to make sure of our water supply, not for today, but for 15 or 20 or 50 years in the future. And the only way this can be done is by the development of the Colorado River.

STATEMENT OF FRED ROSE, CITY MANAGER OF OPERATION, SAN
DIEGO

Mr. ROSE. Mr. Chairman, Senators, and gentlemen: I can not add much to what Mr. Landis said.

The average rainfall in the city of San Diego is about 10 inches, a year, and it depends a great deal upon how this rainfall comes, whether it all comes at once or whether it comes a few inches at a time, whether we get any run-off in our reservoirs. If it is a little rain with three or four or five weeks between rains, why, there will be no run-off at all. If it comes 5 or 6 inches at a time, we get some run-off and accumulation in the reservoirs.. So it is necessary, in order to grow, that we have from 8 to 10 years' water supply on hand at all times. Otherwise, we would consider that we were short of water, because we never know when we are going to face a dry period. Our records here show that we have had a nine years' dry period, and in three of those years there was no run-off at all. So

we must, in order to sustain life here, have a water supply on hand here for a number of years, and we feel safer when we have eight or nine years' supply on hand, and we don't have that supply on hand very often, very many years. At the present time we are estimated to have three years' supply on hand, and storage capacity for seven or eight years. But, in order for us to grow it is necessary for us to build dams and keep on building them until we have built all the dams which can be constructed in San Diego County to conserve the great flood run-offs. And when we have developed them all we will be able to support a population here of probably between five and six hundred thousand people; and then we will have to stop growing, and when a place stops growing it must necessarily retrograde-nothing ever stands still. But in order to keep on growing and reach the population which we hope to have, maybe a million or a million and a half in some 40 or 50 years, we must go to the Colorado River. And whether we bring the water through the mountains, as Mr. Covert has outlined, or whether we join with Los Angeles, it is necessary for us to make an application for our appropriation of the waters from the river, and we should make that application now before the waters are all gone. There are other communities who are striving to place their claims upon the water, and it is for us to make use of the water.

In Mexico there are some 800,000 acres that are being planted to crops which they do not expect to harvest, in order that they may lay claim to more water than they now would have any right to claim. So the city of San Diego should, through some of its officers, put in a claim for at least a proportion of the waters of the Colorado River, and as Mr. Covert has said, if we take 150,000,000 gallons of water here we probably could grow to a population of about a million and a half. And we will, of course, now need that until we have grown so that we can financially construct the claims that are outlined, but in the meantime we could be developing our own supply, and as we develop our own supply, we increase our wealth and our bonding capacity so that eventually we could be able to bring this water from the Colorado River.

And I might say in connection with the Boulder Dam that it has been my observation that it is absolutely necessary that it be constructed and not be put off too long, because I have stood on the banks of the Colorado River and seen the water within 10 inches of running over the levees, and thousands of men sacking sand and piling it on the levees to keep it from breaking through, and they did not know at that time whether the river was going to rise and swamp them or whether it was going to recede. And that was in 1917. They controlled the flood, but if it had broken through at that time and entered that new river, the Imperial Valley would have been doomed; because there was a channel about 100 feet deep caused by the break of 1903 and that channel would have cut back to the Laguna Dam in 1906 when this flood occurred. I had told to me an experience of a man who camped along what is known as the New River. He camped at a waterfall which was about 75 feet high, and when he woke up in the morning the waterfall had moved a half a mile back from him and he was at a loss to know what was wrong; he thought he had moved during the night. That

is how fast it cuts through the silt. And if it cuts a deep channel again clear back to the Laguna Dam it will not be possible to stop that flood. And it is a necessity that the Boulder Canyon Dam be constructed, and constructed soon or we will lose the Imperial Valley.

STATEMENT OF HON. PHIL D. SWING, CONGRESSMAN FROM THE ELEVENTH CALIFORNIA DISTRICT

Mr. SWING. Chairman McNary, and members of the Senate committee, the reporter of one of the Los Angeles papers undertook to interview me when I was in Los Angeles, but I refused to give him any statement because I wanted to reserve what I had to say until this time. I have kept the Senate committee in suspense now three days, and I am going to at this time disclose my position upon the Colorado River project.

I was asked by the reporter if I was in favor of the SwingJohnson bill. Captain Hobson, when touring the United States lecturing for prohibition, was introduced once in a small town by an elaborate introduction in which the chairman of the meeting took pains to explain how carefully Captain Hobson had gone into the subject, how he had made a deep and thorough scientific study of alcoholic liquor, how he had worked out the effects of alcoholic liquor upon the blood, the effect of alcoholic liquor upon the muscles, the effect of alcoholic liquor upon the bones, the effect of alcoholic liquor upon the brain. He closed by saying, "I now have the honor and privilege of introducing Captain Hobson, who will address you upon the subject of intoxicating liquors, and, friends, I want to assure you he is full of the subject."

Having lived for 17 or 18 years in the Imperial Valley and drank Colorado River water, I can truthfully say I am full of the subject.

If I were to take a text, I would take the last statement of Secretary Weir, in which he starts the Colorado River discussion with the statement that the Colorado River is one of the great natural resources of the United States. Some of us people in the seven basin States would modify that slightly by saying it is one of the great resources of the people of the seven States in the Colorado River Basin. But, be that as it may, it is one of the great natural resources of our country, and although I have lived 18 years in the Imperial Valley and been close to the problem, where the shoe pinchest tightest, because the river is at once the hope and fear of those people, for fear in flood season they will get too much water, and they hope in low seasons they will get enough.

I am trying to-night, in the short time I intend to take, to divest myself of any local feeling and will try to discuss one phase of this problem from the standpoint of a national point of view.

To-morrow, when you go into the Imperial Valley, you will meet rugged pioneers who went down there in 1901 and 1902 and succeeding years, with very little money, with empty hands, but courageous hearts, and determination to make something out of a desert waste by the bringing of Colorado River water in there. Those earlier pioneers wanted the United States Government to do for them what it was then doing for other communities in the arid West,

but because of some competition between the capitalists who had gotten in on the ground floor and were in possession of some claims to a water right and to the ditches, nothing in particular came of it at that time. However, the United States Government did survey out an All American Canal as one of the solutions of the problems of Imperial Valley; and there hangs in the office of the Reclamation Service a map dated 1906, showing the proposed All American Canal in practically the same position as it had been surveyed out in recent years. If the Government had then stepped in, many of the complications, many of the problems that have arisen to-day would never have existed.

You will hear when you go over there from the people themselves the problems, the complications, the difficulties, the loss in time. and in money, the uneconomic method of that great irrigation district, which has to spend between two and three million dollars annually in operation and trying to do business under two flags, and one of those flags a nation which has not maintained for some eighteen years any very stable form of government, whose people have not in recent decades shown any particular friendship for our people; the fact that 50 or 60 thousand people are dependent for not only all the water to keep their crops going, all the water to keep their stock alive, but for the very water they drink, upon the good will and consent and permission of a foreign country-it is a precarious condition which you will realize when you go there and see the situation upon the ground. I need not at this time go into the nuisances, the inconvenience, the expenditure of money in just simply trying to carry on business across the line, or the payment of duties for the privilege of building a protection levee which protects the capital of the northern district of Mexico, as well as our own country; I will not go into the question of having to pay exchange upon the very money with which we pay this duty, the problems of tying up construction awaiting the approval which must be obtained from Mexico City, as well as from the State capital at Sacramento. Our engineers may work out a plan which is the best thing for the American farmer, who has to foot the bill, get the approval of the State engineer at Sacramento, send it off to Mexico City and find out that from their point of view it is not to the advantage of the lands in Mexico, and the proposition may be turned down or indefinitely delayed.

The fact that the canal in Mexico is for a great many miles above ground, and open to attack and destruction--when I was there as a county officer we were in great fear during the fight between the contending factions, when one faction held the capital, Mexicali, another army of another faction was camped upon the Colorado River and planning to in some way drive the opposing factors out of the city of Mexicali, and the plan which they evolved, which would involve the least risk to them, was to come down to where this canal was above ground and, with a few sticks of dynamite cut off the water supply of the city of Mexicali and so force their opponents to vacate. The fact that it would also force 60,000 people to vacate, with all the stock that they had, which could not be gotten out in the length of time that the water supply would remain--because

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