OCR Text |
Show 504 INTERSTATE ADJUDICATIONS coming as it does from three hundred and forty-seven witnesses, there is no little contradiction and a good deal of confusion, and this con- tradiction is to be found not merely in the testimony of witnesses, but also in the exhibits, among which are reports from the officials oi the Government and the two States. We have endeavored to deduce from this volume those matters which seem most clearly proved, and must, as to other matters, be content to generalize and state that which seems to be the tendency of the evidence. Colorado is divided into five irrigating divisions, each of which is in charge of a division engineer. That which includes the drainage area of the Arkansas is District No. 2, divided into eleven districts. Under the laws of Colorado, irrigating ditches have been established in this district and the amount of water which each may take from the river decreed. In addition some reservoirs have been built for storing the surplus waters which come down in times of flood, and this adds largely to the amount available for irrigation. The storage capacity of six of these reservoirs is shown to be 8,527,673,652 cubic feet. The significance and value of these reservoirs can be appreciated when we remember that the Arkansas, like many other streams, has its origin in the mountain districts of Colorado, and that by the melting of the snows almost every year there is a flood. The amount of water author- ized to be taken by the ditches from the river is, as alleged in the bill, 4,200 cubic feet, and from its affluents and tributaries 4,300 feet. (Whenever this term is used in reference to the flow of water it means the number of cubic feet that pass in a second.) The average flow of the river, as it comes out of the Royal Gorge at Canon City is, as shown by official measurements for a series of years, 750 cubic feet. So that it appears that the irrigating ditches are authorized to take from the Arkansas River much more water than passes in the channel into the valley. It is not clear what surplus wTater, if any, comes out of the tributaries. There are some twenty-five of them, the average flo.w from four of which into the Arkansas is 313 cubic feet. Aside from this surplus water some may be returned through overflow of the ditches or from seepage. What either of these amounts may be is not disclosed. Indeed, the extent to which seepage operates in adding to the flow of a stream, or in distributing water through lands adjacent to those upon which water is poured, is something proof of which must necessarily be almost impossible. We may note the fact that a tract, bordering upon land which has been flooded, shows by its increas- ing vegetation that it has received in some way the benefit of water, and yet the amount of the water passing by seepage may never be defi- nitely known. The underground movement of water will always be a problem of uncertainty. We know that when water is turned upon dry and barren soil the barrenness disappears, vegetation is developed, and that which was a desert becomes a garden. It is the magic of trans- formation; the wilderness budding and blossoming as the rose. The writer of this opinion recalls a conversation with Bayard Taylor, the celebrated traveler, in which the latter stated that nothing had con- |