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Show About 100 persons attended attend-ed the Soil Conservation District's Dis-trict's Irrigation Tour, Tuesday, July 11, including members of the State Agriculture Agri-culture Stabilization Conservation Con-servation Service, Leonard Eyre, Dean Anderson and Boyd Munns. County members mem-bers of the ASCS also attended. at-tended. R. G. Gardner addressed the group saying this year has been a miracle year for Beaver County. The tour began with the North Creek Project. The Soil Conservation Conser-vation Service Engineers and Technicians assisted with designs, layout of pipelines and structures for the past year. "It's a great day to see it completed and in use," said Gardner. "The North Creek Project had been a dream for 28 years. Through aid from the ASCS Drought Emergency Fund, 11,480 feet of pipeline pipe-line and 13,690 feet of concrete con-crete ditch have been install ed," Acel Gillis explained at the first stop. "At one time five ditches divided from this point. The rocky soil swallowed the water faster than it could run. We just couldn't get the water off the hill. Now with the pipeline there is little loss and we had plenty of water this year. It once took me six hours to get water to my fields. Now it takes twelve minutes." Albert Gale stated that in 1964 it was estimated that the project would cost $42,-000. $42,-000. "We went ahead and got the easements through BLM property at that time, but couldn't afford to carry out the rest of the project." "When we finally got started last year BLM gave us quite a time saying we couldn't go through their property. A few of us went to see Congressman Dan Marriott and told him of our 1963-64 easements. He went to bat for us and was a big help getting this project in full swing." Seventeen farmers share the benefits of the project. The total cost was $126,000. A heavy layer of hard pan and rock made ditch cutting impossible in places. At times the ditch had to be re-routed as the ground couldn't be broken. At noon the tour returned return-ed to the Bicentennial Park where a roast beef dinner was provided. State and local lo-cal officials addressed the group, after which the tour continued taking in the East Manderfield Sprinkler Irrigation, Ir-rigation, and Yardley's Poolimg Agreement in Pine Creek, north of Beaver. Both projects demonstrated how unproductive land can be made useable and profitable profit-able using sprinkler irrigation. irriga-tion. Funds have made nearly a million dollars worth of improvements and aid available avail-able to Beaver County. |