Ogden Daily Standard | 1920-03-15 | Page 10 | Proposal to Divert Yellowstone Waters

PIPdLTODIBT YELLOWSTONE WATERS Engineers Conceive Daring Plan' to Tunnel Divide and Carry Water Into Lake. LIVINGSTON, Mont., March 15. iJ order to retain, for purposes of irrigating irrigat-ing botween 1,000,000 ' and -3,000,000 acres of land in southeastern Montana, water from Yellowstone lake whlcl. now finds its way eventually to the Atlantic ocean by way of the Missis sippl river and the Gulf of Mexico. Montana residents arc engaged in an effort to prevent its diversion through the continental divide to the Pacific. An attempt to divert the waters ot . tho Yellowstone lake to the Snake1 river, taKing them through tho divide' which determines the flow of the great' watershed in the Yellowstone national park, was planned by Idaho interests after engineers had conceived a daring project to tunnel the divide and carrj the Yellowstone water from its 8.000-foot 8.000-foot elevation into Shoshone lako for' irrigating purposes, and then permii ! it to follow the natural course through the Snake river and the Columbia to the Pacific. J Montana residents now are organizing organiz-ing a gigantic Irrigation project which would place water on millions of acres in tho 500-mile valley of tho Yellowstone Yellow-stone river and control the destructive spring floods of the area as well. Headquarters for the Montana projects pro-jects have been established at'this city where the Yellowstone river comes out of the mountains and enters the great I plain which would be irrigated by thej stored water. Articles of incorpora- tion have been filed and tho directors havo started a campaign to raise $50,-1 000 for preliminary work required be-1 fore the construction of a dam, at tho point where the Yellowstone river j leavps the lake and can be undertaken. Besides constructing a dam at anj expenditure of about $300,000, to store a million acre-feet of flood waters, the! I corporation plans to apportion thej water in the Yellowstone river, organise organ-ise irrigation districts and construct canals which will irrigate between 1,-1 000,000 and 3,000.000 acres of land in ien Montana counties.