Bringing The Farmer To The Market

DECEMBER, 1928 ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

The best in the United States, Arizona is favorably known for its state teachers colleges at Tempe and Flagstaff and the state university at Tucson. The latter attracts an unusually large proportion of out-of-the-state pupils, owing to the winter climate. There also are a number of high-class private schools for boys in the state, mostly on ranches, and several fine convent schools for girls. "Like all comparatively new countries, Arizona is remarkably cosmopolitan in the make-up of its population. Its residents have come from every state in the union, and from nearly every foreign country. Hence its people have an unusual variety of interests. There are artists, writers, sportsmen, etc. all able to find congenial surroundings.

"During the past six years the state of Arizona has been engaged in a controversy concerning the developing of the Colorado river, and the apportionment of the benefits that will come from the harnessing of this great stream the third largest river in the United States.

"The normal flow of the Colorado river is now being utilized and no additional irrigation can be established until flood control is provided.

"The state of California has endeavored to dramatize and capitalize the possibility of floods from the Colorado river breaking into Imperial valley. A tremendous amount of propaganda, emanating from California sources, has flooded the country. The flood menace, has been grossly exaggerated in an endeavor to win support for the Boulder Canyon project on the Colorado river.

"Los Angeles promoters and real estate operators, and land speculators in the Imperial valley, are primarily responsible for the promotion of this project. The alleged menace to life in the Imperial valley from floods is being used as the basis of endeavoring to secure from the congress of the United States appropriations adequate to build a dam twice as large as any other dam now in existence, and to store 100 per cent more water than all of the dams built by the United States reclamation service up to the present time, and to develop about 350,000 horsepower of hydro-electric energy. It is proposed to use this power to pump water to a 1,600 feet altitude over a mountain range, we are told, for domestic use in the city of Los Angeles. The amount of water proposed to be pumped, together with the local sources of supply would be adequate for a population equal to that of the 12 largest cities in the United States at the present time. The. remainder of the power, it is proposed touse to develop industry in Southern California-less such small amount as might be used in Nevada with a total population of 75,000 people, and in one county in Arizona. It is also proposed that the government should build canals through shifting sand hills to irrigate one-half million acres of land in the state of California, and that revenues from hte power resources at Boulder canyon, which is located between the state of Arizona and Nevada, would be utilized to pay for the cost of this huge development, and that the states of Arizona and Nevada would be denied any revenue for the use of this great natural resource

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

"The city of Los Angeles and the Imperial valley irrigation district have advanced money to the United States reclamation service to further this proposed project. It is natural that the reclamation service engineers and personnel would welcome a project of this magnitude, which would be a huge monument to the bureau, and would provide for the employment of thousands of engineers and employes for the next decade, in the construction, operation and maintenance of the project. The bureau of reclamation of the United States, has therefore, been a strong advocate of the project, although the engineers of the United States geological survey, the federal power commission, the army, and many private engineers who have examined the project, pronounce it a huge experiment based upon unsound engineering and economic practice.

"The interests of seven states are involved in the pending legislation. All of the states are anxious to retain for their future use an equitable share of the water of the Colorado river.

"Arizona constitutes about 43 per cent of the drainage area of the Colorado river basin and contributes a very substantial portion of the water of the river; California contributes 2 per cent of the area of the Colorado river basin and none of the water. Yet, she is endeavoring, in the legislation pending in congress, to utilize the federal government to take for her use all the water which that state can use and to utilize the power resources of Arizona and Nevada to pay the cost of enabling her to take this water. Arizona has resisted, to the best of her ability, this unwarranted encroachment upon the integrity of our state.

"Arizona has agreed to recognize that the water of the Colorado river be apportioned as follows: that the states of Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Nevada, shall be permitted to utilize all the water which those states can put to beneficial use: that such water as is made available to Mexico, by treaty, then be recognized as having the right to utilize the water of the tributary streams in the lower basin before they enter the main stream, and that all the water remaining in the main stream, after every one else is satisfied, should be divided between Arizona and California, on the basis of 4,200,000 acre feet to California, 3,000,000 acre feet to Arizona, and the remainder to be divided between the two states equally. California refused to accept this proposition, which was suggested by the governors of the other five states in the Colorado river basin.

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"Arizona also advances the idea, which has been concurred in by the governors of all the states in the Colorado River basin with the exception of California, that the states are entitled to derive a revenue from the use of their natural resources for the development of hydroelectric power.

"This in brief, summarizes the basic principles over which we have been struggling for the past six years. We have been faced by a flood of propaganda, based upon misleading information concerning the alleged flood menace. We have also been confronted with the propaganda of the advocates of government development and operation of hydro-electric power resources, throughout the nation. These governmental ownership proponents have been so anxious to advance this pet theory or hobby that they have been willing to sacrifice one of the basic principles upon which this nation was founded, and to vote hundreds of millions of dollars of government credits to take from one state its resources and to give the benefits of them to another state without recompense to the state which they propose to despoil.

"The people of Arizona are united on this issue, no matter how many divisions we may have on other questions. The basic principle which we have been contending for the past six years we are agreed upon, and the gentleman who will succeed me as governor of Arizona on Jan. 6, 1929, is pledged to carry on the contest along the same lines we have followed during the past six years.

"Arizona has the opportunity, if we can secure a fair share of the water of the Colorado river, to irrigate an area of land twice as large as Delaware and nearly as large as Rhode Island. Every acre of this land, irrigated and growing special crops, would be worth 10 acres in nearly any other state. This is part of the stake for which we are fighting."