OCR Text |
Show Record approximately three acre feet of water a year. Practically all of the area colored green on the map requires that amount of water. In view of the large amount of land colored yellow on the map, a study was made as to the economical methods of using the 185,000 acre feet, and in order to accomplish the most economi-cal use of the water, it was designed to run the laterals in a northwesterly direction from the reservoir site to the Colorado line and extending out into Utah. As the time we were making the surveys and estimates we estimated we could irrigate about 280,000 acres in Utah. We figured we could do that with 185,000 acre feet of storage water and diverting the balance from the river as it flowed. To increase the storage capacity of the reservoir to 350,000 acre feet would not permit of the irrigation of any more land. The plan to irrigate more land was to build subsequent 5168 storage on the mesas themselves. In regard to the one and a quarter acre feet required in this section, there is quite a heavy precipitation also over a great portion of the area colored yellow. The climatological reports show from 15 to 20 inches over that area of annual precipitation. An acre foot means water a foot deep over one acre of land, or 43,560 cubic feet. One second of water running for 24 hours will equal approximately two acre feet. 5169 The irrigation season on the San Juan and its tributaries varies quite considerably in different localities. The average would be about 120 days, beginning early in May and ending through August. I am familiar with the country within the State of Utah lying south of the San Juan River. I have been over most of it. It is a sandy soil, rolling mesas and long wide draws. I would say it was a fertile soil, susceptible of cultivation so as to grow crops thereon. Some of this land would be within the Navajo reser- 5170 vation and some outside. On the land south of the San Juan I have studied the gov-ernment contour maps. I have never made any surveys relative to the 774 |