STATEMENT OF MR. ARTHUR P. DAVIS, DIRECTOR OF THE UNITED STATES RECLAMATION SERVICE.

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I am here on your invitation, and am very glad to come and give what assistance I can. I haven't anything in particular to advance, but I am familiar with the problem of the all-American canal and have here a report that was just received yesterday from the field, from the engineer in charge, who has just submitted this final report on the surveys that have been made, and this is the map which accompanies the report [showing blue print]. This report has not yet been received by the parties to whom it is addressed.

Mr. HAYDEN. To whom is it addressed?

Mr. DAVIS. It is addressed to the commission which has it in charge.

The CHAIRMAN. What commission is that?

Mr. DAVIS. The commission is formed under a contract between the Secretary of the Interior and the Imperial irrigation district. That contract provided for the advancement of public funds to the extent of $15,000 and of district funds to the extent of $30,000, providing a fund of $45,000 for making this survey. The survey was to be made, according to that contract, by or under the charge of a commission to be appointed, one member by the district, one member by the Secretary of the Interior, and one member by the University of California, which had been called in to advise on this question. That commission is composed of Mr. W. W. Schlecht, representing the Reclamation Service; C. E. Grunsky, consulting engineer, representing the Imperial irrigation district; and Mr. Elwood Mead, representing the University of California. They have made a preliminary report, which is before you in print. The engineer in immediate charge of the work is Porter J. Preston.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, that report will be made part of the record.

(The report of the engineers on the all-American canal and the contract between the Secretary of the Interior and the Imperial irrigation district for the buildings of the all-American canal are found in the appendix at Exhibit K.)

Mr. DAVIS. The map tracing on the wall, labeled "Map of the Imperial Valley showing all-American canal and lands irrigable therefrom," shows the outlines very graphically of what this scheme proposes. It proposes to take a canal from the Laguna Dam, which is now the head of the Yuma project main canal, and to follow that canal about 10 miles, enlarging it greatly, and at that point continuing on the grade to the Mexican line, and then following approximately along the Mexican line until it reaches the Imperial Valley.

The CHAIRMAN. On the north side?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir; on the American side.

The largest and most expensive problem involved in this is cutting through the sand hills. There is a range of sand hills just west of the Southern Pacific main line, as shown on the map, and part of the sand hills are moving under the influence of the wind.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, how far is it across them?

Mr. DAVIS. It is about 14 miles, roughly speaking, across the sand hills. It is very indefinite on the margin, of course.

Mr. SMITH of Idaho. Did you contemplate building a tunnel through there or putting a pipe in?

Mr. DAVIS. This plan, as surveyed by the engineer, does not contemplate building tunnels, because it is much cheaper to make an open cut.

Mr. SMITH of Idaho. How will you prevent the cut from being filled up with blowing sand?

Mr. DAVIS. That would be a problem to be met, and the plan that we have for that is to plant trees on the windward side and irrigate them and stop the blowing. That is a method that has been used for many years successfully for solving a similar problem on the Suez Canal, and is also used for protecting railways in the deserts of Turkestan, although there they do not irrigate the trees; they select such trees as will grow in the desert and by caring for them and planting them persistently they create a brush cover that accoinplishes the purposes very effectively.

The CHAIRMAN. If you will permit me, General, the feasibility of that remedy has been very well demonstrated in Nebraska, in the sand hills of Nebraska, just accidentally and incidentally by the putting out of trees along the highways and putting out trees along the boundary lines of lands or farms, and also in planting timber-timber culture; that is, in complying with the timber-culture law which we used to have. It has been clearly demonstrated by my own observation.

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir; that is true.

Mr. THOMPSON. Just a question there, Mr. Davis: Wouldn't a tunnel through there, unless it was extremely large, have a tendency to fill up from the silt of the Colorado River?

Mr. DAVIS. No, sir; it would be necessary to give the tunnel a high enough velocity to carry through all the silt that it brings in, and that is, incidentally, one of the means of keeping the canal free of sand. It also will carry through the sand that blows into it. I was about to mention that.

Another method of protecting from sand is that in use along the Oregon Railway & Navigation Co.'s line on the Columbia River east of Portland. The method there is to build little sand, fences and it is the same in theory as the method used to prevent snowdrifts on railroads throughout the country.

The CHAIRMAN. In Wyoming particularly.

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir; fences are built around which the snow drifts, and that same principle applies to the drifting of sand, but in all these cases, the railroads, the wagon roads, and the Suez Canal, they all lack the advantage that this canal will have, and that is water at a good velocity which will carry through the sand that flows into it.

Mr. THOMPSON. Just another question, Mr. Director: What is the approximate fall from the dam toward the Coachella Valley?

Mr. DAVIS. The fall from the Laguna Dam, under this plan, to the point where the canal emerges from the high ground out onto grade in the Imperial Valley is approximately 8 feet to 100,000— that is, it is about seven-tenths of a foot to the mile, and where it emerges from the sand hills, a drop of 6 feet occurs in one place

and later two other drops of 17 and 24 feet, where it is proposed to develop power.

Mr. SMITH of Idaho. You contemplate concreting the bottom of the canal through the sand hills?

Mr. DAVIS. Alternative plans have been made. I think that that is the proper plan.

Mr. SMITH of Idaho. Wouldn't there be danger, Mr. Director, of the water running through there carrying this sand out into the canals beyond and eventually filling them up?

Mr. DAVIS. It will do that, and that is what we want it to do. It is much cheaper to remove sand from a canal on grade than from a deep cut, where it would require long transportation or else a high hoist. If we can bring it up to where there is a 6-foot drop that I speak of, that can be converted into a sluice way, and it can be sluiced in any direction we choose with the extra fall, and gotten rid of cheaply by the proper manipulation of the water.

Mr. SINNOTT. Mr. Davis, they are also oiling the sands along the Columbia River. They put a film of oil over the top, which makes the sand heavy so that it doesn't flow.

Mr. DAVIS. Yes; it cements it together, in a sense. They also do that along the Southern Pacific Railroad west of El Paso. Mr. WELLING. I don't recall, Mr. Davis, whether you said how deep the cut would be through the sand hills.

Mr. DAVIS. The deepest point would be about 150 feet. It would not be that deep all the way, of course. It grades off in both directions and there is only a very short distance that it approaches 150 feet, but there is a good deal of it that is over 100 feet.

Mr. WELLING. Do you know the average depth of it?

Mr. DAVIS. The average depth through there would probably be about 70 feet.

Mr. SINNOTT. How do you get water there to irrigate?

Mr. DAVIS. It would have to be pumped from the canal to irrigate the trees.

Any of these various methods could be used, and the cheapest one that could be put into immediate service would be the board fences, such as railroads use to protect themselves against snow-drifts.

Mr. SINNOTT. Does the wind blow one way there?

Mr. DAVIS. Not constantly, but there are prevailing winds that are approximately from the northwest, and the sands are moving in that direction in general.

Mr. SINNOTT. When we get wind from the other direction the sand boards put the sand in on the tract, but we seldom get winds from the east.

Mr. DAVIS. Yes; they have that trouble. The Southern Pacific Co. has had trouble with sand drifting over its track in the region north of this canal, but not very serious trouble, and they have met that sometimes by moving the track. They have got plenty of country to move it in.

The CHAIRMAN. You are familiar with the provisions of the bill under consideration, Mr. Davis?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir; I have had them all under consideration. The Secretary of the Interior has reported on this, I believe, has he not, Mr. Chairman?

The CHAIRMAN. Oh, yes. Will you please tell the committee why you think the relief provided by the bill is necessary or expedient? What is your judgment about that?

Mr. DAVIS It seems to me that the assistance by the loan of the credit of the United States to the district is not only suitable and appropriate on account of the character of this proposition, it being international, interstate and involving the interstate waters and international waters, but that it is also necessary on account of the great magnitude of the work. It is the opinion of the best posted people, in which I share, that at the present time the district could not make any reasonable market of securities to such an extent as to carry this through. The United States is heavily interested, too, by the possession of several hundred thousand acres of public lands which this all-American canal will water and which can not be otherwise watered. That will be verv valuable when reclaimed.

Mr. SMITH of Idaho. Mr. Director, has your department ever made an estimate to the House of Representatives with the hope of getting an appropriation to do this work and save all this vast amount of wealth in the Imperial Valley?

Mr. DAVIS. No, sir; we have never asked for an appropriation for the purpose. It has been so large and there has not been the urgency for it from the standpoint of the Government that there has been for some other things.

Mr. SMITH of Idaho. Didn't President Roosevelt at one time recommend action of that kind?

Mr. DAVIS. Possibly; I don't recall if he did. He strongly recommended an appropriation to assist in river control, and very strongly recommended that the Southern Pacific Co. control the river and that Congress reimburse them for the expense.

Mr. SMITH of Idaho. On account of the great wealth that necessarily could be saved if they constructed the project, and the necessity of getting immediate action, don't you think that the Committee on Appropriations would look with favor on advancing, say, $20,000,000, just like we did 20 years ago to the reclamation fund to take care of this particular project?

Mr. DAVIS. No, sir; for the reason that the Committee on Appropriations hold that they have no power to recommend appropriations for this work without authorizing legislation, and this bill or something similar is necessary as a preliminary to getting an appropriation through the Committee on Appropriations.

The urgency of this, Mr. Chairman, is due to two facts: The waters of the Colorado River that are utilized for irrigating in Imperial Valley are now diverted just north of the boundary and turned into a natural channel, an old channel of the Colorado River, marked on the map as the Alamo Canal. It follows that Alamo Canal to a point labeled East Side Heading and Sharps Heading, and various points along there, where it is taken out and turned northward into the Imperial Valley. If let alone that water would follow the Alamo Canal down into the Salton Sea, which is the lowest part of any of that country. Now that water all runs through Mexico, and interests in Mexico which are not responsible to the United States and can not be controlled by the United States nor by the Imperial Valley take such water as they choose from that canal. They do that on the pretext of an existing concession that the former owners of Im

perial Canal system made with the Mexican Government. They made it utterly without authority. Being an international question, it should have been handled by the diplomatic and State authorities of the United States, and consequently it has no force in law.

The CHAIRMAN. That is, you mean the landowners made it with the Mexican Government?

Mr. DAVIS. No; the owners of the canal system. It was a Mexican corporation.

The CHAIRMAN. But they are Americans who owned that?

Mr. DAVIS. Americans were financing it, yes, sir; but it was a corporation incorporated under the laws of Mexico, and to it was granted a concession for diverting the waters of the Colorado River and carrying them through the Alamo Canal and diverting from that into the Imperial Valley, and this concession provided that onehalf of the water used should be used in Mexico.

Now, there are nearly 400,000 acres of land irrigated in the Imperial Valley, and about 100,000 on the Mexican side, and that on the Mexican side is rapidly growing, and they have, under the terms of this concession, a right to just as much water as is used on the American side.

Mr. THOMPSON. Just a question there. Outside of this concession, is there not a treaty, an arrangement between Mexico and the United States that the Colorado River shall be kept open as a navigable stream, and the waters shall not be diverted?

Mr. DAVIS. No, sir.

Mr. THOMPSON. There is no such treaty?

Mr. DAVIS. I think not. That is my understanding. I have been told so. I haven't examined it personally. It is a legal question that I have not looked into personally, but that is my understanding. Mr. TAYLOR. This concession that was granted, whatever it was, was that by the Mexican Government or was it the Government of Lower California?

Mr. DAVIS. It was by the Mexican Government, the National Government.

Mr. TAYLOR. The National Government of Mexico?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir.

Mr. TAYLOR. That was brought about, was it not, by these owners of this canal and the Americans that were interested in it?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir.

Mr. TAYLOR. And the Mexican people had nothing to do with it? Wasn't it Americans that were working both sides of the road and getting a concession given by the Mexican Government for their benefit, and obligating our Government also?

Mr. DAVIS. Some of the landowners in Lower California were Mexicans at that time, and I presume some of them are yet, and it is landowners, of course, that are interested in that feature of it.

Mr. TAYLOR. Now, is there going to be any financial obligation imposed upon the Government of the United States by the abandonment of that canal and the construction of another one within our own territory?

Mr. DAVIS. In my opinion there is no financial obligation coming on the United States.

Mr. TAYLOR. Is there any liability at all?