Imperial (87 page)

A SEQUENCE FROM “FERGHANA CANAL” (1939)

Oh, yes, it was the end of stasis; moving pictures had come into favor now. I quote from this unproduced shooting script by the great Soviet director Eisenstein:

SHOT 102

. . . The imprisoned wives of the Emir are dying in their harem, like quail in festive cages . . .

SHOT 104

. . . At the edge of a dried sunken basin, a young wife of the Emir is dying of thirst. At the bottom of the basin are some dead fish. Over all these pictures of death expands the music of roaring and crashing sound.

SHOT 105

. . . Two of the Emir’s wives have died in each other’s arms . . .

SHOT 107

. . . The Emir stares before him, whispering:

“He who controls water--is the victor . . .”

He dies.

SHOT 108

. . . Tamerlane’s warriors gallop into the square . . .

Chapter 78

SUBDELINEATIONS: WATERSCAPES (1901-1925)

. . . why, Granddaddy, there couldn’t
be
any town without all that water, just rivers of it, everywhere. My goodness, Granddaddy, where in the world does it all come from?

—Irmagarde Richards, 1933

T
he California Experiment Station’s record for 1920 contains a troubling parable. Two agronomists researched hither and thither in the southern reaches of our Golden State, then concluded:
Severe alkali injury was observed in a number of citrus groves in several districts, and a large percentage of this injury was due to irrigation water.
Sometimes the water contained chlorides, which yellowed citrus leaves around the edges; in more serious cases the leaves turned brown and fell off. Sulphate and bicarbonate poisoning, on the other hand, prevented the trees from growing.
The irrigation supplies rarely contained enough alkali to harm citrus trees directly, but the injury was due to the concentration of salts after a variable period of years . . .

What to do?
When saline water is the only source of irrigation, the use of basin or flooding systems instead of the furrow system of irrigation may afford temporary relief . . . By increasing the alkaline content of the drainage water, however, the ground water may ultimately become heavily charged with salts.

Temporary relief is only temporary relief.
The most effective treatment for injured groves consists of thorough tillage, plowing down manure, and the application of irrigation water free from alkali.
When that’s not possible, we Americans fall back on Plan B: Use it up, run it down, move on.

In 1904, a mere twenty years after Riverside became the citrus capital of the Inland Empire, we find the USDA pomologist G. Harold Powell writing home to his wife that
the first settled part of Riverside . . . has now gone out of orange growing, with many a tale of woe hanging thereby; the land is now used for alfalfa.
What happened to this land? It
has been ruined by the accumulation of alkali from the seepage water from higher lands.
THE DESERT DISAPPEARS.
No matter. The Inland Empire can easily cede a few square miles to property developers. In 1917 a paean to the United States Reclamation Service can still sing out:
It is in this regard—the pure democratization of the great irrigation systems—that the methods of the United States differ from those of all other nations, ancient and modern.

“DRAINAGE IS THE MOST SATISFACTORY WAY”

In American Imperial, these exigencies and conceptions continue to act upon the waterscape. By 1909, a thousand miles and more of main and lateral canals bring Colorado River water to the brave new farmlands of Wilber and Elizabeth Clark, the speculative tracts of W. F. Holt, the date and citrus orchards of steely experimenters, the canteen (if he has one) of the Customs Collector at Calexico, the barrel, scoop and cup—again, this is my supposition—of the Imperial Investment Company (
YOU MAY FIGURE THAT . . . The Population Is Increasing at the rate of 40 per cent Every 24 Months
), and, of course, the embryonic Mexicali cottonscapes of Harry Chandler. On Imperial County Assessor’s Map number 17-15 (dated 1911), the Central Main Canal droops into Southside like a phone wire, offers itself to the Chandler Syndicate, and finally makes it back west-northwest into the United States, feeding Briar Canal, which runs across Birch Street, where in my day the Border Patrol office will hunch, and irrigating the farms of Visbreek, United Farms et al., Lavigne, Farley Fruit Company, etcetera. Ash Canal flows north-northwest of all that before striking Northside. These branches derive from the Alamo River, which comes from our Main Canal. The Río Nuevo opens its sweet blue vein to Harry Chandler’s Mexican cotton, crosses the line and becomes the New River; American farms line up to drink it.

As yet there is no one entity to control and coordinate all these waterways, but the Imperial Irrigation District strengthens year by year. That model of journalistic impartiality, the
Los Angeles Times,
explains that
landowners were from the first opposed to the organization of the Imperial Irrigation District. They did not want the important business of handling the water mixed with Imperial Valley politics.
The
Times
then quotes a certain disinterested entity, the Colorado River Land Company, which accuses IID of high rates and highhandedness.
The land company has grown tired of these outrages.
Unfortunately for the Chandler Syndicate, American Imperial’s water companies continue to get folded in; and by 1922, IID’s hegemony will be perfect, at which point this will be the largest irrigation district in the Western Hemisphere. Dig me another canal, please!
We need have no fear that our lands will not become better and better as the years go by.
I’ll drink to that! How about you? I’ve read that
by 1919 about a quarter of the irrigated land in Imperial Valley had been spoiled by a high water table loaded with Colorado River salts.
THE DESERT DISAPPEARS.
But no one in the Imperial Valley has ever told me any such thing; maybe no irrigated land there ever got spoiled at all.

Drainage is the most satisfactory way of reclaiming alkali land,
advises a circular from 1917.
When good drainage outlets, such as the Alamo or New River channels, are available, drains can be constructed to carry off the surplus water with much of the alkali . . .
And so the Salton Sea’s salinity increases, and the Alamo and New Rivers, drains for more than alkali, begin to stink.

“THAT WHICH HAD NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE”

On the subject of those delicious ureters and sinks of Imperial, it may be of interest to learn how well the people who used them foresaw their future.

The flood had subsided, and to-day, July 10, 1906, as I write, instead of a turbulent torrent of water rushing on its way to the Salton Sea, a stream about seven hundred feet wide and from ten to twenty feet deep flows past the towns, confined within banks thirty feet high and with a current of not more than six miles an hour.

As soon as the Colorado is returned to its original channel the flow in New River will become normal—that is, it will be a small stream depending for its main supply of water from Volcano Lake and the surplusage from the main canal of the Imperial system.

Well, that reads accurately enough. In 1914 the Volcano Lake levee will break, and the New River will once again snatch away highway bridges, but in the long run the river does get
normal,
so that in days to come we will all feel inclined to hold our noses.

And what about the sea itself?

The area of the present Salton Sea is about 400 square miles, and its depth about 90 feet. If the river discharges no water into the sea, it will probably dry up in about 10 or 12 years.
Those words were written in 1906. The sea is two hundred and twenty-seven feet deep now.

By 1922, when
The Winning of Barbara Worth
makes its third appearance on the best seller list, Imperial has grown proud of its center, which some booster or other has dubbed
the Dead Sea of America.
(In 1932 the mudpots will be magnificently dubbed
California’s “Little Yellowstone.”
) Salton Sea mullet, caught in nets baited with fresh alfalfa, sell in San Francisco restaurants. (Salton Sea tilapia sells in restaurants now; I make a point of not ordering it.)
The flesh is so oily that a ten-pound fish will yield nearly a quarter of clear white oil.
Salton Sea Beach gets platted; tourists plunk down their dollars and become speculators. One of the sea’s many exotic attractions is Mullet Island, where a photo shows a pipe-smoking hatted man standing before a lightbulb-strung structure called
HELL’S KITCHEN.
I hope he makes a million.

By the end of the twentieth century, no Imperial County farmer I can find expresses any sentiment about the Salton Sea but indifference or disdain. Moreover, Mullet Island has been a peninsula since at least 1932.

Well, who could have guessed? The engineer Rockwood, who bears much of the blame for the Salton Sea accident, exculpates himself thus:
We have since been accused of gross negligence and criminal carelessness in making this cut, but I doubt as to whether anyone should be accused of negligence or carelessness in failing to foresee that which had never happened before.

“SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA HAS MUCH WATER”

Speaking of unforeseen events, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the artesian wells of Artesia, California, begin to fail. Who would have thought it? In 1903, a certain Clarence Dougherty solves the problem for all time, installing
the first centrifugal pump, driven by a gas engine,
an innovation
soon followed by many others. These pumps . . . furnished a plentiful supply of water for several years.

In 1904 a professor in Claremont, California, having chatted with
thoughtful men,
detects some
misgiving
on their part, because with all the pumping going on, the water table has begun to drop. Fortunately,
if we note the records of the past we discover that we have had ever and anon years that gave a great down pour. We may safely expect another of these very soon, I feel sure. Thus the men that plow in hope and faith, I believe will not reckon without their host.

In 1915, the ever-trustworthy Mr. Rockwood reassures us all that
there is ample water for the irrigation of every acre of available land, including Mexico. If this is the case, you are greatly benefited, not injured, by any increase in the irrigated area across the line. The insinuation that the “Otis-Chandler” syndicate influenced the adoption of this plan, if true,
should therefore be cause for gratitude. So let the water flow!

In 1917, twenty-three years after a fellow in Indio pierced the ground and made the region’s first artesian well, a circular for settlers assures us that
practically twice the present area can be irrigated from wells if the water is rightly handled and conserved.
One had better hope so, for
all
Coachella water is artesian in that period, the wells being from a hundred to more than half a thousand feet deep, and giving nine to fifty inches of sweet water. (Down in Imperial County, only Holtville possesses decent wells.) In 1918, the Coachella Valley Water District frets about certain artesian wells
being exhausted.
In 1922, the Water District reports
an overdraft on the artesian basin of 15,000 acre-feet.
Indeed, Coachella’s water table has fallen seven feet in the last five years.

Between 1922 and 1925 alone, the State Engineer reports a drastic sinking of groundwater in Southern California. In some places this decline is as much as fifteen feet. Hence the fate of Clarence Dougherty’s innovation:
As the water levels receded, this type of pump became obsolete, larger wells were drilled, and today [1932] water is drawn from greater depths by electrically operated deep well pumps.

In 1925 the Honorable John I. Bacon, Mayor of San Diego, warns the United States Senate that
we have, to-day, about four years’ supply of water ahead, and we are praying for rain this winter, because if we do not get it I do not know where we will be.

And what about Los Angeles? The famous and infamous William Mulholland genially informs the same gathering that
in the last two years we have been close to the edge two or three times.

THE CHAIRMAN. Has the city exhausted all the water supply in the Owens Lake country?

MR. MULHOLLAND. Yes, sir.

All the same, I read in the latest issue of my
California Cultivator
(1925) that here in the Golden State all is golden:
We have about 30,000,000 acres in farms, 4,250,000 under water, other millions to be brought under the ditch. We produce from $500,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 of agricultural wealth each twelvemonth.
(Meanwhile, on the next page, I read that the water table in the Fillmore section of Ventura County is falling; we’ll have to deepen our wells.) In 1926 I find the following headline in the
Imperial Valley Press,
which as it turns out is simply making the point that Southern California possesses more water reserves now than a year ago; the phrasing, however, is emblematic:
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA HAS MUCH WATER.