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fact is that very little of the products of this to-be-developed territory will enter in competition with the farmers of the Middle West or the East.

In order to get a comparison as to the conditions that might result, let us look to the products that now come from Imperial Valley, that section which is now developed. Around 60,000 carloads, as has already been said, 85 per cent of them composed of products that are shipped at a time when the rest of the country is out of production; marketed on a market that is bare of those commodities except for these shipments. The staples that are produced there, alfalfa, corn, oats, barley, that sort of thing, are practically all fed to livestock or stock which are furnishing dairy products and meat for California consumption. That is not competition. With the rapid increase of urban development on the Pacific Coast, California must look to agricultural development. This state is fast entering a period of transition very similar to the one from which Los Angeles County has just emerged. Only a few years ago, Los Angeles County producers were heavy exporters of feed, poultry, eggs, honey, many fruits and vegetables and nuts, and today they are practically confined in their exports to citrus fruits and nuts. They are heavy importers right now of poultry, eggs, dairy products, honey, and many fruits and vegetables. California must have a great agricultural development. With the constant loss of agricultural land to city building; with the taking of agricultural water for domestic and industrial usage, California will soon, as stated, reach the period that Los Angeles has now reached and become, instead of exporters of many crops, importers of the necessities of life.

This Nation achieved its greatness through the constant development of agricultural resources. And those vast areas that used to lie westward and that were susceptible of development by the lone pioneer and his team and his plow, they are developed now. All that is left are those projects that require unified effort, entirely beyond the approach of the attack of the individual. It means reclamation. We submit that that piece of reclamation work which has first call on the interest of the Government to-day is that territory which lies below the dam site, the Boulder Canyon Dam site of the Colorado River. It means something more than water to be delivered to our country down here; it means something besides additional millions of acres in production; it has a human appeal to every citizen_who knows the conditions, an appeal which Lane Weber makes. In that appeal are 55,000 to 60,000 people whose very hope for the future depends on the speed with which the Colorado River is brought under control. Those people are producing wealth for you and for me and for this Nation; they have invested their life's work; they are occupying the same position that our friends across the sea occupied a few years ago; they are looking to the national Capitol at Washington and calling "Hurry, America, hurry!"

To that appeal from our friends in Imperial Valley, the people of San Diego offer their voices. We ask you to hurry! Thank you.

STATEMENT OF JOHN F. DOVERT, ENGINEER

Mr. DOVERT. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the Senate, and gentlemen: My peculiar job here to-night, I presume, is to tell these gentlemen of the Senate in what particular way San Diego can directly benefit by the development of the Colorado River. Being an engineer and not a public speaker, I have to rely a great deal on maps and diagrams to illustrate my talk, and if I can have a few minutes to prepare that, I will do so at this time. When I first came to San Diego about 21 years ago there were three dams built at that time to supply San Diego and vicinity with water. At that time our reservoirs created by the dams were completely dry and the city was obtaining its water by pumping from the sand in the different river bottoms. And since that time there have been constructed additional dams bringing the total capacity of all the reservoirs in the immediate vicinity of San Diego to 300,000 acre-feet of water.

The map here, probably not very plain to some of you in the far end of the room, is a map of a portion of San Diego County, showing the irregularity of the ground and the contours and the difficulty attendant therewith of obtaining a water supply. In the lower portion of the map you will find San Diego Bay and city, and the map covers the counties on the Mexican line up to the north line of the county, and from the Pacific Ocean back to the crest of the divide, about 50,000 feet in elevation. Altogether, I should judge the territory comprised in this map about 60 miles wide, 75 miles long.

Now, San Diego is obtaining the supply of water for her city here of 150,000 people, in addition to irrigating some 20,000 acres of land, from various small rivers draining from the mountain region toward the coast. The run-off from these streams is very erratic. Some years there has been almost nothing; other years the run-off has amounted to over 800 per cent of the average run-off. That is, if you think that the problem of regulating the Colorado River is something where their variation is only from about 50 per cent of the mean to about 150 per cent of the mean, you can contrast it with our problem where we have to regulate from nothing to 800 per cent of the mean run-off and provide reservoirs which will store up the water over a long period of years.

The run-off of the streams is illustrated by this diagram which I will explain to you as well as I can. Beginning at the left hand side, the heavy line represents the accumulated run-off of all the rivers adjoining San Diego City from the Cottonwood to the Santa Isabella. Beginning with the year 1883, which was a big, noted flood year in this vicinity, the information by steps to the flood of 1895, the long dry period, or 1895 to 1905, then another period of accumulated runoff and immense flood of 1916, which flood started up in the air almost, and another flattened period. These are the diagrams, sort of diagrams, an engineer is called upon tot use to determine to what capacity it is necessary to build reservoirs, and to determine what the safe yield of water will be from that. Our problem here is to provide reservoir capacity to cover a period of almost 10 years. The present city safe yield is about 7 per cent of the total capacity of the reservoirs. In other words, in order to carry the water over a period years such as occurred at this time, we can only draw each year

of

as a safe amount of water, 7 per cent of the total capacity of our reservoirs. The balance of the water is lost by evaporation and the long period which it is necessary to store water; approximately 50 per cent of the total run-off impounded is lost by evaporation.

Now, several years ago I began studying the question of what the Colorado River would mean to San Diego. My first efforts in this direction did not meet with much encouragement; nobody seemed to think that it would be possible to bring the waters of the Colorado River to San Diego. But, continuing my studies, I came to the conclusion that it was possible, not only possible but feasible and a good business proposition. The large map of a portion of southern California showing the Boulder Dam in the upper right hand corner, the course of the Colorado River, that is, the proposed Boulder Dam, by the way, shows the course of the Colorado River as far as the Mexican line. The green areas shown in this map represent irrigated lands, that is, much of it representing Imperial Valley. The yellow areas represent agricultural lands which are not irrigated but could be irrigated or put to other uses if they had the water supplied. You will notice in the vicinity of San Diego on this map most all of the land is given the yellow color, indicating that there is a large amount of land which could be put to use if we had the water. There is very little green area, showing lands already irrigated.

Now, the proposed development of the Colorado. River—I am not going to try to explain the whole project, because that has already been gone into, but it is assumed that the water will be regulated in the channel below the Colorado River, and picked up at various points by the different agencies desiring to use the water. Los Angeles, I understand their proposition is to divert the water somewhere near Blythe, carry the water across the mountains through a series of tunnels, over to Los Angeles. The Imperial Valley will still continue to divert their water about the same place; if the All-American Canal is built, they will, of course, divert it through the All-American Canal at a point near Yuma.

In studying over the different ways by which San Diego could be benefited, I was very much interested in the Los Angeles project and the possibilities of San Diego joining with Los Angeles and bringing the water from some point on their conduit down to San Diego. But it occurred to me that the best proposition for San Diego, which, by the way, would be the cheapest, would be to bring the water across from the Laguna Dam, across Imperial Valley, along the foot of the mountains on the est side of the valley and through a tunnel through the mountains to some point in the San Diego River above the proposed El Capitan Réservoir. This project occurred to me to be the most feasible, inasmuch as it involved, if done in cooperation with the Imperial District, only the construction of about 75 miles of canal and possibly 25 or 26 miles of tunnel through the mountains. If not done in cooperation with the Imperial Valley it would still be possible to make a diversion in the Colorado River near the Laguna Dam, lifting the water through the sand hills, syphoning it across the valleys through a pressure pipe line, and continue it through the mountains in about the same location. There are many ways in which

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 some 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

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 Bouldr 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

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