The 30-Mile Tunnel That Would Have Turned the Big Bend Green
Federal reclamation engineers looked at damming the Spokane River to water two million acres of dry Columbia Basin land — and then said the money wasn't there yet.
It is a note of disappointment that the correspondents at Washington, D.C., have been sending out the last few days regarding irrigation undertakings by the government in our state. From the reports of the chief engineer in charge of the reclamation of the arid lands, it would seem our state is not to be favored with an expenditure of any government funds from that source for at least a year to come.
The examinations already made show the possibilities of the most gigantic undertaking in this respect to be found in the United States, which would be to divert the waters of the Spokane river through a tunnel thirty miles long to the Big Bend country, where it could be made available for watering 2,000,000 acres of arid land, but the project is too enormous to be thought of for the present. In two other localities where examinations have been made, one has been found impracticable for government experiment because of large private holdings and railroad land interests, and the other, in Okanogan county, for the reclamation of 50,000 to 60,000 acres, will have to be left for another appropriation, as feasible projects in other states have been found calling for an expenditure of $25,000,000, or $9,000,000 more than the present available appropriation.
“…to divert the waters of the Spokane river through a tunnel thirty miles long to the Big Bend country, where it could be made available for watering 2,000,000 acres of arid land, but the project is too enormous to be thought of for the present.”
The scheme reporters were calling too enormous in this era eventually became real: the Columbia Basin Project, powered by Grand Coulee Dam, now irrigates roughly 670,000 acres of the same Big Bend country. Today the fight has inverted — instead of finding water for land, Eastern Washington farmers are fighting over a declining Odessa aquifer and shrinking federal water allotments.
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