Checking the Waste: A Study in Conservation - Mary Huston Gregory

The irrigation canals may also be used to supply water-power, and the canals may be used as are other canals for towing barges. If electric power is produced, electric towing is cheap and very desirable as a means of transportation.

In short, our water supply should be as carefully used and with as little waste as the land of forests. The most important improvements needed are, a Lakes to Gulf Waterway that shall be safe and practicable at least for vessels of moderate size; the improvement of the Ohio, Missouri, Tennessee and Upper Mississippi Rivers; an inner coast passage from New England to Florida, and in navigable rivers dredging and deepening if necessary, to make many outlets to the sea which will afford cheap transportation.

In the West, the Columbia, San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers with their branches should be made navigable. Many western rivers have been almost ruined by filling with rocks in hydraulic mining, but this is now prohibited by law and if the channels were cleared they would again become navigable.

Appropriations for much of this work have already been made by Congress, but the work is not systematically planned. The cost of all of it would be about sixty-two and a half cents a year for each man, woman and child in the country and every one would receive some benefit.

The National Conservation Commission on Waterways found that the average family pays for transportation or freight on all its food and clothing and the necessities of life, nearly or quite one-third their actual cost. "It is estimated that the direct benefits would be a yearly saving in freight handling of $250,000,000, a yearly saving in flood damage of $150,000,000, a saving in forest fires of at least $25,000,000, a benefit through cheapened power of fully $75,000,000 and a yearly saving in farm production of $500,000,000; a total of $1,000,000,000, or twelve dollars and fifty cents for each person—twenty times the cost! And this does not take into account the benefits from irrigation, drainage, and the lessening of disease by a pure water supply."

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