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

page 21

THE ALL-AMERICAN CANAL. 21 cessful operation of the Imperial Canal. The extension of irrigation in our own as well as in foreign territory by a unified single canal system has been accomplished without international treaty, by the unique method of operation in Mexico through the agency of a Mexican corporation whose stock is owned and whose affairs were directed by the predecessors of the Imperial Irrigation District and are now being directed by this district. THE YUMA PROJECT. The Yuma project is a United States Reclamation project located in Arizona and California on both sides of Colorado River. The construction of project works was recommended by a board of engineers on April 8, 1904, and construction was authorized by the Secretary of the Interior on May 10, 1904. The Laguna Dam at the head of the project canal on Colorado River, about 10 miles northeast of Yuma, was completed in March, 1909. Its cost, including some river bank revetment and the diverting works, has been about $2,100,000. Some water was used on the project lands prior to the completion of the Laguna Dam through ditches which had been acquired from private owners. The main canal of the project is located on the California side of Colorado River from the Laguna Dam down to a point opposite Yuma, and its water is taken thence to the Yuma Valley, on the Arizona side, through a large inverted siphon under the Colorado River at Yuma. The project plan provides for large pumping plants below Yuma on the east main canal for raising water to irrigate about 50,000 acres of mesa land. Its proposed extent is about 120,000 acres, but there may be future additions. In the Yuma Indian Reservation on the California side of the river there are about 15,000 acres of irrigable land; in the Yuma Valley about 55,000 acres; and on the Yuma mesa about 50,000 acres. The lands of the project adjacent to Colorado River are protected against overflow by heavy rock-faced levees and ample heavy equipment; also two quarries and a railroad on the entire length of the levees are maintained in order to afford means for protection during flood stages of the river. A drainage system is required and is now under construction. The population in the project area, including Yuma, is about 12,000. The value of the crop output in 1917 from about 35,000 acres under cultivation was about S3,750,000. In 1918 the cultivated area was about 45,000 acres, and the value of the crops from this area exceeded $5,000,000. COLORADO RIVER AS INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY. Had the character of the lower Colorado River been better known it would never have been made a part of the boundary line between the United States and Mexico. The river is not, as is now well known, in