Show TilE IRRIGATION COMMITTEE Our people should arrange to receive the Senate committee to investigate the ques tion of the irrigation and reclamation of arid lands We should be prepared touted the committee which will be here next August and to give it information bearing on the subject the gentlemen arc to inquire intoOne One of the most important measures adopted by the late Congress was that providing for this investigation and no pubic pub-ic money will be more profitably expended ex-pended The inquiry is to extend over Dakota Montana Idaho Utah Nevada California Oregon Texas Colorado Color-ado and Wyoming embracing all that scope of country known as the arid region The objects are to ascertain first if it is possible pos-sible to bring any considerable tracts of this country under cultivation This must be learned from surveys which will demon dem-on the feasibility of storing water and leading it on to the uplands and dry benches which lie above the streams and second the wisdom or propriety from an economic point of view of undertaking the work the cost of the enterprise and the value of the and being taken into account ac-count Gentlemen who are somewhat familiar with the arid region by reason of their connection con-nection with the national geological survey sur-vey do not hesitate to say that the scheme II is not only practicable but that the investment invest-ment will prove wonderfully remunerative I remunera-tive They assert that there are places in the mountains where vast quantities of I water can be stored tD be drawn off as it shall be required for irrigation They say I that these reservoirs can be constructed above land now valueless which with water will produce more every year than the cost of the reservoir We all know there are I millions of acres of the very choicest of I will always remain without I land which w n y value unless water can be brought to it and the In Utah where there ere no plains valleys are narrow only a small proportion of the land is under cultivation and productive produc-tive Not more than onethird of the Salt Lake valley is cultivated That which is productive is worth all the way from t23 to 51000 an acre according to location It will not be denied that the land in this valley above the present pre-sent irrigatmn line is just as rich as that below or that the former with water would be as desirable for farms and gardens gar-dens What is true of this valley is true of hundreds of others in these mountains only the Salt Lake valley is one of the best watered in all this region But these alleys al-leys are as nothing compared with the broad plains of Dakota Colorado Texas and Arizona which arc useful now only to hold the better country together There is no lack of water Enough moisture falls in the mountains embraced within and about the arid region to irrigate ten times as much be cultivated All that is land as can ever required Jis to husband the water against the time of need and the feasibility of doing this is the business which will call out the Senate committee the coming summer sum-mer It would bewell if some of our pub liespirited citizens who are interested in the welfare of this territory were to set about the matter of collecting data for presentation to the committee on its arrival Of course Utah insignificantly in will figure very this gigantic scheme which contemplates the expenditure of millions of money and the providing of homes for millions of American people Yet small as the arid i portion of Utah is as compared with the whole it is large enough to be taken into account and to justify an effort to induce the government to bring us within the benefits bene-fits of the proposed enterprise |