Money & Water

Last week the $140,000,000 Florida Ship Canal, which southern Floridians claim will make the lower half of that State an arid waste, was back in the Washington news when it was discovered that President Roosevelt is apparently determined to push this project despite the House's refusal to appropriate money for it (TIME, Feb. 17). The President started this Atlantic-to-Gulf waterway with five million relief dollars, allotted $200,000 more when that ran out. Last month the House declined to appropriate $12,000,000 to keep the work going, on the legitimate ground that Congress had never authorized this canal's construction. Last week Representatives were greatly surprised to find that President Roosevelt had dribbled out another $200,000 in relief funds to the canal, was evidently in a mood to dribble out a lot more from his extra-budget basket if Congress would not supply the cash.

Meanwhile another great New Deal construction project crashed into the headlines last week involving money, water, beets, beauty, politics and the Continental Divide.

This undertaking, known as the "Grand Lake--Big Thompson Transmountain Diversion Project," has not yet got beyond the point of surveys. Its aim is to take water from the comparatively well-watered western slope of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, carry it in a tunnel straight through the Continental Divide, release it for irrigation in the sugar beet country on the relatively dry eastern slope. This feat would be accomplished by a complicated series of engineering triumphs. Grand Lake, on the western edge of Rocky Mountain National Park, empties into the Colorado River at an altitude of 8,370 ft. A few miles below the lake, water would be taken from the river, pumped up hill to a reservoir. From the reservoir the water would flow through an open canal back into Grand Lake, thus keeping it always at a high level. From the eastern shore of Grand Lake a tunnel would be drilled through 13 miles of solid rock under Rocky Mountain National Park to the eastern side of the Continental Divide. From there water would be carried in a conduit and a second tunnel to a point on the Big Thompson River just east of the town of Estes Park. There a power house would be erected to make use of the pressure created by the drop in elevation from Grand Lake to generate electricity. Part of this power would be transmitted back across the Rocky Mountains to the Colorado River where it would pump more water up into the reservoir, to flow into Grand Lake, down through the tunnel, to make more power. After the water had thus worked for itself, it would be used for irrigation. If it ever reached the sea, it would arrive not by the Gulf of California but by the South Platte, Missouri and Mississippi Rivers at the Gulf of Mexico. Cost of the project would be $25,000,000 to $40,000,000. Colorado farmers who use the water would be supposed to help pay it back eventually. The Senate, last week, added an amendment to the Interior Department Appropriation Bill, legitimizing work on this project. This action thoroughly vexed Colorado's 77-year-old Representative Edward Thomas Taylor, whose constituency lies on the western side of the Rocky Mountains, from which the water for the project is to be taken. He maintains that water is worth its weight in gold on his western slopes, that in his constituency there are some 2,000,000 acres which need irrigation. If the eastern slope wants water from the Colorado River it must give his people back an equal quantity, gallon for gallon--not by pumping it up from rivers on the eastern slope but by building reservoirs to conserve the spring flood waters on the western slope. Otherwise, warned Representative Taylor, the upper Colorado might go virtually dry for five or six months of the year.

Another rousing objection to the Trans-mountain Project came from the U. S. National Park Service which feared the ruin of the primal beauty of Grand Lake and Rocky Mountain National Park. Now free to express himself, Horace Marden Albright, onetime director of the National Park Service, protested against "commercial exploitation" which will leave "an eyesore for the next 1,000 years" in one of the most beautiful spots in the U. S. domain.

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