Don't Bond the Valley to a Dry Ditch

Irrigation. Don't Do It. Wenatchee Valley Citizens Should Not Bond Themselves to Build Their Canal.

The following sensible editorial appeared in the last issue of the Wenatchee Advance:

In last week's issue of the Advance was published a letter from one of our citizens in which he advocated the placing of $100,000 bonds on the Wenatchee Irrigation District under the provisions of the Wright law. It is far from our wish to say anything which could be considered as opposed to any economical system of securing water for the valley, but we do not think the placing of so heavy a debt upon the district would be advisable. While the irrigation of the valley might perhaps be better and more economically accomplished under the Wright law than by private corporations, it is far from a settled fact that it would be so under the conditions existing here. Of about forty-five irrigation districts in California organized under the Wright law there can scarcely be found a half dozen which can be called successful: illegal issues of bonds, litigation, adverse decisions of the courts, and small portions of land ultimately using water are a few of the more important reasons for the failures. Another important fact in connection with such enterprises is that their future success depends entirely upon the immigration of people who have money and brains. Private corporations always spend large sums of money in advertising their lands and go to great expense to induce immigration, but irrigation districts cannot, or at least do not. The money and brains necessary to the proper advertising of a country, the bringing in and placing of settlers, are not often given simply for the glory there is in it. The most noteworthy fact in connection with the California districts was the lack of settlers to buy and improve their lands. The facts that a district has a large bonded debt, is or is likely to be involved in litigation, the money stolen or wasted, are anything but inducements to the thrifty homeseeker. Would a $100,000 bonded debt on the Wenatchee district be a good thing to talk about when advertising our valley? When it became noised abroad that we were to spend $100,000 of borrowed money on an irrigation system, we would have a flood of broken-down professional men, loan brokers and vagabonds of all descriptions. We would have high old times as long as the money lasted, but when those eastern bondholders began to draw from fifteen to twenty thousand dollars a year from us, which there was no possible chance to get them to return, we would begin to go down, down, and we would keep on going down, and the Lord only knows where we would stop.

We might add that the Advance need not go to California for illustrations of the failure of the Wright law. At Kennewick, a district bordering the same great Columbia that courses through the lower part of the Wenatchee valley, and where the soil and natural conditions are as fine as anywhere in the West, the experiment of irrigation by the Wright law has been tried and proven a complete failure. An immense debt was saddled upon the district and the bonds floated to get the life-giving water on the land. The people, stimulated by the hope of a large immigration who would share in the burden of indebtedness, went buoyantly and confidently to work building their little homes, planting their orchards and improving their places. But hard times came on, the immigrants did not materialize, the obligations of the district have not been met, and the bondholders are either unable or unwilling to make further advances to keep up the canal. The result is that this spring no water will flow in the canal, little homes are being abandoned, and heads of families must start out to provide for their families anew. Read the description of the havoc wrought by the Wright law from the pen of one of the number whose losses perhaps mean the savings of a lifetime. Read it, you Wenatchee people—and reflect:

What does a dry ditch mean to the acres of alfalfa; what to the strawberries and other small fruits that look so promising now; what to the more than 20,000 fruit trees growing so thriftily, many of them just beginning to put forth their buds and blossoms and bring the first crop of fruit, the first return for the patient care bestowed upon them? Neither frost nor insect has harmed them, but a dry ditch means death to them all; death to the hopes of every settler here; the end of all reasonable expectation of returns for the time and money invested, both in the ditch and the improvements under it.

What of those places—the dearest on earth—called homes, with their beautiful shade trees and grassy lawns; what of the rosy-cheeked children that play around them; what of the mothers who have toiled to make a rose-garden to grow in this desert—who have shared the privations and hardships of building a new home? The ditch brought the life-giving water. If there comes no water, all these homes are desolate, and banished are the families that loved them; gone are the hopes and money, wasted and worse are the best years of their lives. Here was started a new and profitable industry which would add much to the prosperity of the whole county—the peppermint farm—but it will perish with the rest under a dry ditch. You wonder why we don't bestir ourselves and turn water into the ditch and save our homes and this beautiful valley? Why, simply because the number of settlers now residing here cannot repair and maintain so many miles (about 40) of ditch under any conditions; but under the mismanagement of the clumsy, uncertain, disreputable irrigation district, burdened with over $500,000 of debts upon property not assessed at one-half that amount; a system that attempts to force payments in enormous sums from those not using water or able to get water to use, or for which the ditch cannot supply water; a system that allows land which is in no way liable for the debts or expenses to use most of the water ever supplied—it is folly to expect any success.