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<br />002178 <br /> <br />4 <br /> <br />ARIZONA v. CALIFORNIA. <br /> <br />the growing needs of the basin. The natural flow of the <br />Colorado was too erratic, the river at many places in <br />canyons too deep, and the engineering and economic <br />hurdles too great for small farmers, larger groups, or even <br />States to build storage dams, construct canals, and install <br />the expensive works necessary for a dependable year- <br />round water supply. Nor were droughts the basin's only <br />problem; spring floods due to melting snows and seasonal <br />storms were a recurring menace, especially disastrous in <br />California's Imperial Valley where, even after the Mex- <br />ican canal provided a more dependable water supply, the <br />threat of flood remained at least as serious as before. <br />Another troublesome problem was the erosion of land <br />and the deposit of silt which fouled waters, choked irriga- <br />tion works, and damaged good farm land and crops. <br />It is not surprising that the pressing necessity to trans- <br />form the erratic and often destructive flow of the Colorado <br />River into a controlled and dependable water supply <br />desperately needed in so many States began to be talked <br />about and recognized as far more than a purely local <br />problem which could be solved on a farmer-by-farmer, <br />group-by-group, or even state-by-state basis, desirable as <br />this kind of solution might have been. The inade- <br />quacy of a local solution was recognized in the Report of <br />the All-American Canal Board of the United, States <br />Department of Interior on July 22, 1919, which detailed <br />the widespread benefits that could be expected from <br />construction by the United States of a large reservoir on <br />the mainstream of the Colorado and an all-American <br />canal to the Imperial Valley.. Some months later, May <br />18, 1920, Congress passed an Act offered by Congressman <br />Kinkaid of Nebraska directing the Secretary of the <br />Interior to make a study and report of diversions which <br /> <br />· Department of Interior, Report of the All-American Canal Board <br />(1919), 23-33. The three members /of.. the Board 'were engineers <br />with long experience in Western water problems. <br />