OCR Text |
Show Niagara Falls Flow Dwindles Majesty Threatened By Water Diversion NIAGARA FALLS is no longer quite the majestic torrent it used to be, and New York state park officials are meeting in Buffalo Buf-falo this month to do something about it. The custodians of New York scenery will view gravely a lessening lessen-ing flow of water over the American Ameri-can side of the falls. They will compare notes on the Niagara diversion di-version treaty ratified by the United States and Canada last October. It sanctions an increased diversion of Niagara water to the making of electric power. The old boundary waters treaty of 1909 specified limits in cubic feet of water per second which each of the two nations could divert. di-vert. A temporary agreement to meet the World War II emergency revised the 1909 limits upward. The 1950 treaty, instead of setting limits, specifies the minimum flow over the falls that must be maintained in and out of the waking hours of tourists. Water above this variable minimum mini-mum less at night than during the day the neighbor countries may divide equally and divert into hydroelectric hy-droelectric turbines. The net effect of the new treaty is that, as hydroelectric hy-droelectric capacity allows, water diversion may roughly double the total set in 1909, and may exceed the World War II limit by more than one-third. |