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Show strung along these streams and give striking con- trast to their expansive desert and mountain hinterlands. Here are clustered many small ag- ricultural cities that process and ship the products of the irrigated farms and the livestock partly nourished by the sparse, depleted vegetation of the desert ranges. This irrigation economy, as well as the similar development on other smaller streams in the arid portion of the region, depends not only on the surface stream flow to sustain it but relies in addition upon underground return flows. With- out costly new multiple-purpose projects, the water supply for irrigation in the Snake River area has narrow limits. The Bureau of Reclamation has estimated that there are potential irrigation projects in the Pacific Northwest which would bring water to a total of about 4 million acres of new irrigated land. Since most of these lands cannot be irri- gated by private or State action because of cost, the future growth of irrigated acreage is de- pendent upon Federal water and land policy. The food requirements of the future population of the Pacific Northwest may call for the irriga- tion of some or all of this land. It is possible that adequate conservation will require the shifting to forage production of thousands of acres of dry land now devoted to wheat, a surplus crop. This change would most efficiently care for some of the increased regional needs for meats and other animal products. If, on the other hand, wheat exports are needed to implement national or foreign policy, national expenditures would be justified for new irrigation for crops which can be most efficiently grown for regional consump- tion. Some additional acreage will be needed for existing or new specialty crops that can be most efficiently produced for other regions (such as alfalfa and other seeds, fruits, etc.), but there is little prospect that these would justify large new acreages. Here and there new tracts will be needed to improve the supplemental feed supply for the range livestock. In a subsequent chapter the Commission offers recommendations which would eliminate the test of financial feasibility for irrigation projects. They will be placed on the same basis as all other water resources undertakings for which eco- nomic evaluation alone is required. This will resolve the seeming conflict, in connection with certain projects, between the irrigation and hy- droelectric power objectives, enabling both to go forward together for the development of the re- gion. Under present requirements, there is al- ways the possibility that costly irrigation projects might necessitate increases in power rates. Low-cost electricity holds out the promise of new and expanded industrial uses which may alleviate the instability of annual and cyclical employment characteristic of this predominantly raw material producing region, improve the log- ging and milling practices which now result in serious wastes of timber, and assist in the economic use of low-grade mineral deposits. Coupled with war requirements it has brought to the Pacific Northwest new aluminum pig reduction plants and a large, though badly located, rolling mill. Postwar fabrication of finished aluminum prod- ucts has grown modestly. If other factor" of production costs and markets do net way, this growth, with the stimulus of iow-cost hydroelectric energy, may produce in time a varied and widespread light metals industrial complex. The establishment of caustic soda and calcium carbide plants has also prepared the way for the production of a wide variety of chemical products. But much greater diversification, dis- persion, and refinement of industry is needed to make available the full fruits of the greatest hydro- electric resources possessed by any region of the United States. Disregarding cost factors, it is estimated that the whole Columbia system, in- cluding its Canadian section, might possibly sup- port an installation of 50 million kilowatts. Two-thirds of this potential could be made avail- able with a headwaters storage program (multi- ple-purpose in most cases) of 30 million acre-feet. The Federal Power Commission estimates that 34 million kilowatts is economically feasible. The peculiar importance of hydroelectric en- ergy for the Pacific Northwest is indicated not only by its great potential in this inexhaustible kind of energy, but also by the fact that it has scant quantities of good coal, and no known oil 24 |
