ITEMS OF INTEREST July 3, 1909 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

Arthur Hooker, secretary of the board of control of the national irrigation congress, will present a resolution for approval by that organization at its seventeenth session in Spokane Aug. 9 to 14, memorializing Congress to issue three per cent gold bonds, running one hundred years, to the amount of $5,000,000,000, or as much thereof as may be necessary for the following specific purposes: One billion dollars for drainage of overflowed and swamp lands, thus reclaiming an area equal to one hundred thousand square miles; one billion dollars for the reclamation by irrigation of forty million acres of arid and semi-arid lands, now partly or wholly waste; one billion dollars to construct and improve deep waterways, to develop thousands of miles of territory now without adequate transportation facilities; one billion dollars for good roads and national highways, for the lack of which the loss to the farm area of the United States is approximately $500,000,000 annually; one billion dollars for forest protection, reforestation, and conservation of the forest resources.

The most comprehensive and costly subway plan ever outlined for New York city has been presented to the public service commission by the Bradley-Gaffney-Steers Company. It includes the construction with privated capital of the Broadway-Lexington avenue route from the Battery to the Bronx, a two-track connecting subway in Canal street, the Lafayette avenue-Broadway route in Brooklyn, and two spurs of the Broadway-Lexington avenue route along Jerome avenue and 138th street in the Bronx. The estimated cost of this work is $83,000,000. The company stipulates as part of its offer that the city complete the construction of several vital parts already projected. The company offers to equip, maintain, and operate the various routes named as one system, charging a five-cent fare and issuing transfers at intersecting points. The cost of the routes to be built by the city under the offer would be $16,000,000, so the entire proposition is a $100,000,000 plan.

With the completion of the vast irrigation works now being carried on by the Federal Government in our western states, this country will possess three of the greatest dams in the world. The Shoshone dam, with a height of 326 feet, and the extremely short length of 175 feet, will store 456,000 acre-feet of water; the Pathfinder dam, 115 feet high and 226 feet long, will store 1,025,000 acre-feet; while the Roosevelt dam, 284 feet in height and 1,080 feet long, will store 1,284,000 acre-feet. The most notable structure comparable with these is the Assouan dam, which, after the work of increasing its height has been completed will impound 1,860,000 acre-feet of water.

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