OCR Text |
Show THE WATER SITUATION. Speaking of water and the water situation, what if, in lieu of this city, it was a great corporation cor-poration whose property was suffering because of a water scarcity, what would be done? Suppose J. B. Haggin of San Francisco was at the head of that corporation, what would be his almost immediate conclusion? What would be the nature "of the order he would dispatch to his superintendent? Would it not be something like this? "When in the Ontario mine the water began to be troublesome, did we not put in a steam pump? Did we not keep adding to this first pump until we had twenty-three runni-.ig and they were all overworked until the big Cornisn pump waa installed, in-stalled, and then it was a fight for life until we finished a three mile tunnel and drained four miles square of that old mountain? 'Well, if that was a good way to drain a mountain moun-tain of too much water, it seems to me that, wih the want reversed, the sarae means would be proper to obtain the needed water. Have some pumps put in the Liberty Pari: wells and force that wafer into the city. Then, as the streams running down to the works are fed only by surface sur-face fissures, employ a geologist to demonstrate the formation and folds of the mountains, and a hydraulic engineer to trace out the fissures and then drive for them. The means necessary to relieve re-lieve a mountain of surplus water ought to find the water for use. There is an ample supply to irrigate the farm, all that is needed is to go after it in an intelligent way." Is it not reasonable to believe that if Salt Lake was a mine, and if water was needed for the boilers and the concentrators, the water would be obtained if the directors of the mine knew where there was plenty of water convenient for the purpose? The water need has been urgent in this city for thirty years. Has there been any scientific means employed to ascertain the best way to meet the need? Has any city administration ever done anything more than to try to utilize the water in sight? And some in sight, a volume perhaps per-haps greater than that of City creek, Parley's creek and the Cottonwoods combined, right at our doors runs to waste and has been running to waste for a dozen years, and every administration finds some excuse for ignoring it. Can any one tell us why? The streams that run down the canyons can at best tap no fissure save near the surface; the chances are good that the waters above Liberty Park come from the deep reservoir reser-voir of the hills, and that no pump, no matter how great its capacity, could make any impression upon them. This is not our thought; rather it is the belief of the ablest scientists that ever studied the formation of the mountains, and applied to the question the laws which govern like formations in other places. Surely they ought to be better authority than the jpsi dixit of Councilman Fern-strom. |