How Labor Views the Power Situation in California

Abstract

CALIFORNIA'S power problem is incidental to the state's larger problem of flood control and water conservation. The nine counties, popularly known as southern California, have a somewhat different situation than obtains north of Tehachapi Pass, the dividing point between northern and California. To be sure, both ends of the state have a common interest in conserving every drop of available water. Under irrigation, California becomes a paradise. Without irrigation, millions of the state's richest acres remain barren wastes. And yet this state, where water is the vital element, permits an average annual waste of 27,000,000 million acre feet from its northern watershed alone to run to the sea. Those 27,000,000 acre feet are sufficient to irrigate 18,000,000 acres. Once brought to the land that water will add billions to the wealth of the state, and increase the products of farm, orchard and vineyard by hundreds of millions annually. But the loss of this needed water is not the only waste entailed. Incidental to the waste of that water, the state is subject to flood damage running, during seasons of heavy rain-fall, into many millions annually. This flood menace increases as the country is developed. The channels of the rivers of northern California cannot carry the volume of flood waters which pour into them. In the pioneer days the excess water was allowed to escape over the lowlands, to find its way eventually back into the river channel. But with the development of the state these lowlands are being diked and brought under cultivation. More and more have the channels of the rivers been taxed during seasons of flood. The result has been higher and higher levies. The limit has about been reached. It is freely predicted that the next year of heavy rainfall will see large flood losses in northern California. The years 1922 and 1924 were, however, dry years. The lands that will be endangered by flood with the first year of normal rain-fall were in 1924 a parched plain. The nine counties of California with abundance of water within their reach, find their development slowing down because of water shortage. Parts of the counties are subject to even greater flood menace than are the interior valleys of the northern part of the state. But with the Colorado River controlled and the waters brought to the lands California would be assured of a water supply constant and sufficient. California then, both north and south, needs water as few other states need it, while menaced by more water than its river channels can carry to the