Who Owns the Yakima River?
A clash is brewing as the federal government attempts to wrestle control of irrigation systems from private companies in the Yakima Valley.
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.
A clash between the state of Washington and the federal reclamation service over irrigation in the Yakima valley is imminent. It has long been the opinion of the reclamation service that the government should assume the general management of irrigation in Yakima valley, and today the government would probably buy up all the private canals to build its own storage reservoirs and new high-line canals. But the government engineers have repeatedly declared they will not undertake any irrigation work in the Yakima valley if the state persists in perfecting its selection in behalf of the Sunnyside company. Government engineers report that private canal companies have already appropriated the flow of the Yakima river many times over, and predict that when the proposed canals are completed, they will practically absorb the entire flow of the river and deprive irrigators in the lower valley of water to which they had prior rights.
“As the government sees it, there is endless conflict in store if private enterprise is allowed full sway.”
This struggle for the 'general management' of water resources defines the history of the American West. Today's battle between corporate water users, municipal needs, and federal oversight echoes these exact concerns about how to distribute the finite flow of the Yakima River.
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