AZ vs. CA:04 California Exhibits, Vol. IV; Nos. 151-192

page 11

THE ALL-AMERICAN CANAL. 11 dropped off toward the north. Notable among these channels is the Alamo River, at one time also known as Salton or Carters River. Other flood water, collecting in the Paredones and Saiz Channels, went southwesterly and westerly into the Volcano Lake region, and still other water escaping from the river lower down was collected by the Abejas, the Pescadero, and other southwesterly channels, and ultimately found its way through the Hardy Colorado into the Gulf. The main portion of the delta was thus well watered. The extent of. annual flooding varied, of course, with the magnitude and duration of the flood flow As a consequence of this well-watered condition the growth of trees, brusn, weeds, and grasses was rank; and this vegetation retarding, as it did, the widely extended sheets of flood water that went from the river over its broad flat banks, became a barrier to any sudden change of the river's alignment and gave assurance that if left undisturbed the river wrould have long remained on its original course to the Gulf. That this condition no longer obtains is quite fully set forth elsewhere in this report. To a large extent the natural obstacles to a free overbank flow of water westerly and northerly into the Imperial Valley have disappeared and artificial barriers are now required to hold the flood flow of the river in check. The Colorado River must, at an early day, be put on a direct course .to the Gulf of California. The burden of maintaining barriers against the waters from the Volcano Lake region is increasing from year to year and the cost thereof should not fall upon the Imperial Irrigation District alone. Other interests are protected as well in Mexico as in the United States. The control of the lower Colorado will remain an international problem as long as the delta of the river is divided between the United States and Mexico. Furthermore, the menace from the! floods of the Colorado is such a serious menace to so large an area in the United States and to so many people and to so much property that the protection should not have to be done as at present by a local district through a foreign agency. The Imperial Irrigation District is the successor to the California Development Co. The district is a public or quasi municipal corporation organized under the laws of California, and has bought the canal properties formerly owned by the California Development Co., includ- Note.-For a full account of the river's change of course in 1905 and the successful operations which resulted in the river's being returned to its original channel, see the paper by H. T. Cory, the engineer in charge of this work as published in the Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Volume LXXVI, pages 1201 to 1571. See also a paper by C. E. Grunsky in Volume LIX, page 1, of the Transactions, and the report by C. E. Grunsky to the Secretary of the Interior published as Senate Document No. 103 of the Sixty-fifth Congress, first session.