The Legion's Frustrated Ambitions for Valley Land
American Legion delegates seek to expand the local land settlement project, only to find the cost of pumping water may bury the plan.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
O. B. Gwin and S. F. Branch left Wednesday morning for Olympia to attend the annual state convention of the American Legion. The convention will last three days. Of local interest will be the convention's position regarding the state land settlement. Under the Legion's urging, the last legislature appropriated a sufficient sum to extend the state land settlement project in this valley to 100 tracts. It was intended at that time to secure lands owned by the state university in the vicinity of Vernita to fill out the project. The report of the state engineers recently made shows the average lift for pumping water on this land to be in the neighborhood of 70 feet, and at the present price of electricity, the Department of Conservation Development figured the pumping cost would be prohibitive, and therefore rejected the university land. The Legion is still anxious to enlarge the land settlement project, but whether land that will be acceptable to the state can be found elsewhere in the valley at a price the state is willing to pay is yet to be determined.
“The Department of Conservation Development figured the pumping cost would be prohibitive.”
This 1923 struggle over the economic feasibility of irrigating the Wahluke Slope highlights the deep, long-standing tension between government land-use ambition and the harsh realities of the Columbia Basin's water needs. Today, that same land—much of which was eventually repurposed for the Hanford nuclear site—remains a subject of intense debate regarding its environmental safety and best use.
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