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Show What Price Water? How much is irrigation water worth? I In all probability your guess would be much too low. The extent to which water users will go in guarding their irrigation water against conveyance convey-ance losses was startingly illustrated il-lustrated recently in Arizona. The Phelps Dodge Corgora-tion; Corgora-tion; requiring more water for its operations at Morenci, Arizona, Ari-zona, proposed that it would be willing to pay for the lining of some of the canals of the Salt River Valley Users Association if a portion of the water saved by such lining were turned over to the corporation for its use. Specifically, Phelps Dodge proposed pro-posed to spend $1,500,000 to line with concrete approximately 15 miles of the Associations canals. ca-nals. It' is estimated that amount of lining would save 10,000 acre-feet acre-feet of water each year. The Association operates a series of storage reservoirs and a system of canals, all for the purpose of providing irrigation water for the project lands. Many of these canals have been lined with concrete con-crete to eliminate seepage losses and to improve the economy and efficiency of the operations. But many additional miles of canal still are unlined. Half of the water saved would accrue to the Water Users' Association As-sociation entirely free of cost, while the other half would be used by the corporation. Furthermore, Fur-thermore, this division of the salvaged water would continue only until the corporation had used 75,000 acre-feet, or for about 15 years. After that the entire saving would accrue to the Association. It is apparent that this watar is worth at least $20 per acre-foot acre-foot to the Phelps Dodge Corporation. Cor-poration. That does not necessarily neces-sarily indicate its worth as irrigation ir-rigation water, but to have anyone any-one put such a high value on water, wa-ter, which we often are guilty of wasting, certainly gives us something to think about. Apparently Ap-parently it made the water users stop and think, for when the proposal was voted on at a recent re-cent election, it failed to carry by the necessary 3A majority. This is a reflection of the water users desire to continue their long established program of lining lin-ing portions of their canal system sys-tem each year and using all the water saved on their own lands. This illustration of the value of water in some parts of the country should be a warning to every one who is affected by irrigation. Properly designed and I constructed underground pipe-l pipe-l lines, lined canals, and all lib-lerally lib-lerally seasoned with sensible irrigating ir-rigating practices, will help to 'save that water. It is fortunate that the water situation in Utah is not nearly as acute at this time as it is in other sections of the country. However, there is little question but what Utah farmers, through their own initiative, could materially ma-terially improve their water resources, and at the same time build a bulwark of safety to protect the productive capacity of their farms against a possible drouth era. E. P. " THOMAS Scientific Swedish Massag Medical Gymnastics Uintah Power & Light Office Building |