DESERT TRANSFORMED.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4211, 4 June 1935, Page 6

DESERT TRANSFORMED.

THE GREAT BOULDER DAM. COLORADO RIVER HARNESSED. SCHEME COSTING £80,000,000. Boulder Dam, the nost gigantic irrigation and water-power scheme ever attempted, has been completed, states a correspondent of the “Sunday Express, London. For a generation American engineers have dreamed of harnessing the Colorado River. \\ itii the closing of the sluices which will stum the waters roaring down from the Grand Canyon, where Nevada, Colorado and California meet, their dream has come true. As a result of it, the people of the United States are looking forward to the time when 1000 square miles of the most arid and barren land in America will be supporting a population of 5.000,000, and he on of” the wealthiest and most prosperous areas in the United States. The mind reels at the great expense involved in tire obstruction of the dam. Tire actual dam has cost £30,000,000. With the collateral works the total cost is £70.000,000. Finally it will be £BO,OOO, COO. The cost of the Panama Canal was only £72.000,000.

Huge Concrete Wedge. The height of the dam is 750 ft.— more than twice the height of the cross on the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. It forms a wedge of solid concrete, thicker than the average frontage of a modern block of flats, thrown across a gorge 2000 ft. wide Four million four hundred thousand cubic yards of concrete were used in its construction.

The vast reservoir is 115 miles long and covers an arei of 145,000 acres, which is roughly the area of the county of Middlesex. It is estimate! that it will take throe years to fill. When it is full there will he enough water in it to submerge 32,500,000 acres of land to a depth of one foot. That is approximately the area of the whole of England. Apart from the irrigation scheme, plans have been made to establish a hydroelectric plant capable, of producing 1.000.000 horse-power Compared with the Boulder Dam the schemes for hydroelectric production and water conservation in Britain are insignificant. The I Lochaber electricity scheme in the Scot- ! tish Highlands cost £5,000,000, with plant capable of producing 50,000 horse-power. The Shannon scheme in Ireland cost £3,000,000. The Gallo vay scheme, which is to pour electric power into the north of Englana, cost £5,000,000. Little Human Life in Vicinity. When the Manchester Corporation dam at Hawes Beck is completed the surface area of Hawes Water will be only 1000 acres, compared with the 145,000 acres behind the Boulder Dam

There is nothing in Britain comparable, even in imagination, to the Boulder Dam, unless it be the proposal to harness the tides in the estuary of the River Severn to generate electricity at a cost of £38,000,000.

Seven States in America will benefit by the completion of the scheme. They are Colorado, Wyoming. Utah, New Mex-

ico, Nevada, Arizona and California. The area which will he affected by the irrigation scheme is almost devoid of human life. It is a country given over to lizards, horned toads, solitary prospectors and mirages. Yefc the Colorado basin is immensely rich in precious metals and valuable minerals. Every State in the area has plans for more fertile acres, more dams and more reservoirs. South California plans to double her agricultural population in five years. Neva etc dreams of great mills and factories hung n the precipitous walls of its canyons. Another Great Scheme.

Another gigantic dam lias been begun at Grand Coulee, on the Columbia River, in the State of Washington It is estimated that when the scheme is completed the cost will he £35,000,000. The Coulee Dam scheme is part of the “New Deal.” “We are going to see with our own eyes,’ said President Roosevelt, when he inaugurated it, “electricity and power made so cheap that they will become standard articles of use, not only for manufacturing and agriculture, but for every home.”