Harnessing the River's Pulse
A new Seattle-based company plans to revolutionize Eastern Washington agriculture using 'current motors' that turn river waves into irrigation power.
The Anawoshpa Irrigation Company, which was reincorporated a few days ago with $200,000 capital stock, will manufacture in this city a machine for the irrigation of arid lands, and will use it on large tracts along the Columbia and Snake rivers in Eastern Washington. The incorporators are: Edward S. Austin, Alvin A. Batcheller, Robert Moran, David J. Longstaff, Thomas W. Butler, Henry E. Denny, Bert E. Rathbun, Benjamin A. Starkey and Roger S. Greene. In speaking of the objects of the company, Robert Moran said: 'We intend to build what are known as current motors and pumps for irrigating land. These motors are very economical. In fact there is no expense attached to their operation. They are utilized at the rapid places and falls of the rivers, the stream furnishing the power by an undulating wave motion. It is very similar to the machine used during high water of the Chicago river to carry the water containing sewage to the channel leading to the Mississippi river. Our machine will have a capacity of 1,000,000 gallons a day. We have constructed one at a cost of $500, but when we have the special machinery required the cost will be materially reduced. They are a great thing and will revolutionize the irrigation of the whole of Eastern Washington in time. The machines are to be built in Seattle.'
“The stream furnishing the power by an undulating wave motion.”
The dream of turning the Columbia and Snake rivers into an engine for agricultural expansion was a massive civic obsession in the 1890s. While these 'current motors' were eventually eclipsed by massive hydroelectric dams, the ambition to reshape the arid interior of the state remains a defining, if controversial, feature of Washington's infrastructure.
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