COST OF IRRIGATION by Herbert M. Wilson

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 10, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 35.

COST OF IRRIGATION.

By Herbert M. Wilson

MANY great irrigation works have already been constructed in this country, and their total cost, so far as it can be determined, offers a fair index to the magnitude of the expenditures involved in irrigation construction. According to the returns of the eleventh census, the aggregate length of the greater canals, those over fifteen feet in bed width, is about 9,000 miles, while they have nearly double that length of laterals and distributaries. These works cost over $27,000,000, and irrigate about 2,000,000 acres, while they command an even greater area to which water can be supplied when the demand may require it.

In California alone about $13,000,000 have been spent on irrigation works to date, and in Colorado $15,000,000; much of this outlay, however, was for the acquirement of land for right of way or for purposes of investment. Numerous single irrigation projects have cost from one to two millions of dollars apiece, and within the next two or three years the money involved in the construction of these works will probably reach the enormous sum of fifty millions of dollars. In India $360,000,000 have been expended on irrigation works, of which one single canal system, that of the Great Ganges Canal, cost $15,000,000 for construction; and several others have cost over ten millions of dollars apiece.—Herbert M. Wilson, in the Independent.