RIVER CONTROL

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 138, 12 June 1936, Page 17

RIVER CONTROL

miLXG THE MISSOURI GREAT AMERICAN TASK THE FORT PECK DAM (From "Tho Post's" Representative.) NEW YORK, May 20. From the arid north-eastern plains' ■f Mpntana to its confluence with the Mississippi, above St. Louis, the Missouri is being tamed and conrolled, to halt its destruction of the and, of which it carries away fortyhree good, arable acres per mile, by rosion of its numerous bonds—an ncalculable loss to the country. The igantic task, undertaken by the loover regime, has already involved n expenditure of £40,000,000, On the main stem, from the Father f Waters to Sioux City, lowa, a disance of 700 miles, shifting banks are eing curbed by stone revetments and laited willow mattresses to ensure a ermanent navigation channel, after tie completion, three years hence, of lie Fort Peck Dam. This project will ne day leave the river as neatly urbed as the Rhine or the Danube. America .began spending money on ie river in 1834, when army engineers rst began to wrestle with the proramme of the snags and sandbars of lis temperamental 'river. At one ime it was the main artery from east j west. Capitals of States were foundd on its banKs; farm communities revv up, to secure economic transit of rops to market; army posts dotted its antage points. For sixty years after le railroad superseded the steamoat, the great river was empty of "affic. By contrast, very soon, all the iland empire it drains—sßo,ooo square liles, the bread basket of America — my send its grain out by barge, and 2ceive in return machinery from the idustrial centres. On the sun-baked plains of Montana, 300 men are working, night and day, sven days a week, to complete the lammoth, hydraulic, earth-filled Fort eck Darn by 1939. When it begins to npound water, nearly 700 miles of the ] tissouri will be joined to 3000 miles [ 0 inland waterways, linking the Great akes, the lower Mississippi, and the istern and western seaboard. The am will be five times more extensive lan any of its kind—9ooo feet long, 375 feet wide, and 242 feet high. The ice of the dust-swept plains will be langed by the 20,000,000-acre feet of •ater, impounded in a cool, clear lake E melted snow from the Kockies, 185 liles long, sixteen miles wide, with 300 miles of shore line. When the ■ibutaries of the Missouri hurl down leir cold spring freshets from the lountains, the Fort Peck Dam will and as a mighty bulwark against the oods that have been denuding of soil le fertile valleys below. In dry immer months, its diversion tunnels ■ill release a reliable flow of water 1 raise transportation high above the mdbars. When the river no longer evours those acres of soil, its Indian ame, "Pekitanoni," meaning "muddy aters," will be but a meaninelp" :ho from the past