NEW MARVEL

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXX, Issue 13670, 18 June 1942, Page 6

NEW MARVEL

COLORADO RIVER BASIN

MINERAL FOR AVAR PRODUCTION

Turgid flows the Colorado. The river system draining onethirteenth of continental United States has begun in peacetime to channel all its wild resources into domestic supplies of water and power. Now war finds the Colorado River Basin accelerating its civilised role, particularly in regard to minerals. with most of the expansion slated to benefit the post-war world perhaps even more than the war effort, states the “Christian Science Monitor.”

Americans have known the Colorado mainly for the beauty of its Grand Canyon or for the impressiveness of its Boulder Dam. Americans are growing to know it as the largest single source of water and power for defence-regimented southern California. Americans may some day know its Basin as a self-suffi-cient industrial empire, perhaps before the war is over.

Boulder, Barker, Laguna and Imperial dams across the chocolate waters, and projects up tributaries such as the Gila and Salt Rivers s® far have been just about all the development of water and power and river control.

Massive and important as these have been, they are but a drop in the bucket, in current estimations of the National Resources PlanningBoard, the United States Bureau of Mines, and the seven Basin States themselves.

Most spectacular new project under way is the diversion under

Rocky Mountain Park, across the Continental Divide, to supplement water supplies for G 15,000 acres m the South Platte Valley. The Big Thompson-Color ado project, to ■l4 0 0 0.00 0 dollars, begun in 193 S for completion in 194 5, also is to develop 145.000 kilowatts of power near Estes Park.

-V bushel of other projects, some even bigger, are at varying stages of approval by Federal and State officials.

The war's emphasis on mineral importance of the Basin has evoked promising results. More than twothirds of the 0.000.000 tons of manganese ore indicated by national exploration by the Bureau of Alines up to last July 1 were found in the huge Basin. Other strategic'minerals, nickel and tungsten, have been tapped, with further explorations continuing.

Exploring iron and coal deposits to expand the steel industry on the Pacific Coast, the Bureau has been assaying the Eagle Mountain iron deposit north-east of Indo, Calif., believed to be one of the nation s richest; at Bull Valley in Utah, and another in Arizona, all three in the Basin whose exterior is so deceptively barren in appearance.

Centre of the nation s vanadium production is in Colorado and Utah, where the Bureau is studying ways to increase output.

Federal and State officials babe dignified reports (through publication) that oil showings in one county alone surpass all known withdrawals in the world’s history.

In Boulder City, Nevada, the Bureau’s experiment station has been expanded and experimental pilot plants in the area have been erected to test processes for reducing manganese ores on a semi-commercial scale. Because the ore is low grade, an abundance of low-cost power would be necessary for actual largescale production. Boulder Dam, big as it is, is not expected to meet such a requirement, so priority may have to be given for further power developments in the Basin.

Boulder has already been used as a clinching argument for the recent location of aluminium, magnesium, and synthetic rubber industries in the Los Angeles and Las Vegas areas, and for the expansion of steel fabrication in the Los Angeles area.

Guiding the development are the Drainage Basin Committee of the National Resources Planning Board and the “Committee of 14 and 16,” the latter homely designations applying to the governing groups under the Colorado Compact of 1922.

These committees have, met annually. At the last meeting, in Los Angeles in October, development was classified into primary, secondary, and independent projects, the delegates agreeing to push for immediate completion of the primaries.

Siltation was affirmed as the major problem of the entire Basin. Solutions of all other problems, such as river control and construction, have been outlined, but expert committees have reported no method of land management to prevent Lake Mead, behind Boulder, for instance, from filling with silt eventually—probably many hundreds of years.