WSP08049

• File Number: 8276.855
• Description: Grand Valley Unit - Colorado River Basin Salinity Project
• State: CO
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Water Division: 5
• Date: 2/1/1974
• Title: The Grand Valley - An Environmental Challenge
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Publication

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This problem is not a new one. Several
thousand years ago, when our civilization
was m the cradle of its infancy, a great king
developed irrigation on many thousand acres
of his kingdom, where the broad Euphrates
Valley lay parched and sun drenched. His
subjects were overwhelmed by the generosity
of the earth as it bloomed in response to the
water. Towns sprang up and increased. Life
became easier, and the arts flourished.

;...l..,,_p

The kmg was proud, "I have made water
to flow in dry channels - changed desert
plains into well-watered lands - giving
fertility and plenty." But time made the king's
boast an idle one. After many years, long
after his death, the salt began to rise to the
surface - as it does now here - and the soil
began to withhold its abundance, and signs
of crop failure appeared, No doubt the
wise men then realized what the problem was,
but the solution? They had none.

So the tillers of the soil, who had reaped
such abundance that was now being denied
them, gathered their belongings and their
families, said a last good-bye to their
overirrigated homeland, and moved off into
the night, into the surrounding desert, and
were lost from sight, into oblivion. How many
other civilizations have thus come and gone?
Will ours follow?

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