“You bet,” said Mr. Whitney. “The lake will be forty miles long, and if you started to walk around it, keeping directly on the shore line, you would have covered two hundred miles before you could get to your starting point. If the water it will hold was spread out one foot deep, it would cover nearly five thousand miles or about twice the size of the State of Delaware.”
“And how many gallons will it hold?”
“There will be so many that we have found it easier to figure in what we call acre feet. The gallon figures are too cumbersome. An acre foot is the amount of water that would be sufficient to cover an acre one foot deep.”
“And the water of the reservoir would cover how many acres?”
“Two million at least,” he answered. “In gallons that would be something around nine-hundred billion gallons. So you can see how much easier it is to figure in acre feet.”
“I should say so,” said Bob. “But it must cost a fortune to construct all this. Do you know about how much?”
“The estimate for the dam itself is five million, three hundred thousand dollars, and the canals and other expenses will bring the entire cost up to over seven million.”
“Gee, how will the farmers ever pay that off? Didn’t you tell me that the money was only advanced by the Government and that the farmers would have to return it after the water is delivered to them?”
“I did,” said Mr. Whitney, “but as the dam will furnish enough water to irrigate one hundred and eighty thousand acres, you see that brings the cost down to about forty dollars an acre, which won’t be much once it is all under cultivation. This charge is like a mortgage—the Government is secured by the land itself. But it won’t be long now—two or three years at the outside—before the dam is finished and the land is ready to be cultivated. Ted Adams, my predecessor here, finished up a diversion dam below at Leesburg which has been a help.”
“What a wonderful thing it is,” Bob said at last.