ALL-AMERICAN CANAL

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 December 1933, Page 11

ALL-AMERICAN CANAL

BIC SCHEME APPROVED

Construction of the 120-rnile allAmerican canal, designed to furnish an abundant water supply to the Imperial Valley in California, is assured with the allotment of 6,000,000 dollars from the Public Works Fund to start the work (says the “Christian Science Monitor”). The canal, to cost approximately 27,000,000 dollars, far from being purely local to California, has national and international ramifications. A delegation of Western Senators and Representatives called on President Roosevelt to urge action on the application which has been pending for three months. They promised that tho rights of all the Colorado River States, as well as of Mexico, will be guarded. 1 The first development will be purely for irrigation purposes, but power features of the dam may be evolved later.. Private power companies have opposed the canal project because of the plans to build power units along the route to furnish cheap power to the Imperial and San Diego Valleys. Construction of the canal was authorised by Congress in the Boulder Dam Act. It will be built by the Bureau of Reclamation and will be repaid by the water users of the Imperial Valley. The canal will be entirely within. American territory instead of partly in Mexico, as originally planned. It will assure an adequate water supply for 500,000 acres of land in the Valley, but will not bring new land into cultivation. The rdlotment just announced will enable the Bureau to build the canal from the Colorado River to Hanlons Landing. Approximately 9000 men will be immediately given work. An allotment of 11,208,000 dollars was also made for the construction

of eighty-six postal sub-stations in six large cities—- Chicago, Boston, Now York, Cleveland. Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. This allotment is intended to open employment in large metropolitan centres where the build jug trades are. badly hit. These new struefores will serve the Government in place of licensed sub-stations v, here leases are expiring, approximately 1.000.000 dollars a -year' being saved.