during the year just past, given most judicious consideration to discovering a scheme of activity along the river channel, which will effectively control the shifting movements of the river to a permanent channel between the two levees.

It is concluded that a new policy should be adopted in this work; that instead of constructing bank protection works at points of acute danger; instead of battling the attacking current at the last trench where retreat spells large costs in moving levees, roads, houses and other improvements, and where defeat spells destruction; instead of interposing rigid structures to withstand by mass action, the direct onslaught of the ever-encroaching waters: skilled engineering talent should be applied to coerce the current and guide the direction of the eroding waters, restraining the river to its channel and repressing the undermining tendencies of its tortuous course. By coercion and guidance, by making it easier for the waters to continue in their channel than to expend their energies in cutting the confining banks, the vagaries of the river can be controlled and its capricious tendencies. suppressed. The direction of the river current at the point of incipient attack on earthen banks can be changed by the cutting of brush, by the planting of willows, and the construction of control works at carefully studied locations in the river's course. By these means it is believed that with an expenditure but little exceeding the cost of maintaining the expensive bank protection works if they were eonstructed, the river banks may be successfully protected from undue erosion and the river levees may be successfully protected from undermining.

Since it is impossible to ascribe the benefits of expenditures for this class of work to individual properties, for practically the entire valley benefits either directly or indirectly from it, it would seem that its initiation, direction and costs should be undertaken by the state. Request for the appropriation of $300,000 is therefore made to carry on this work for the next two years.

In addition to the erosion of the banks by the river current, over that portion of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers navigated by steamer traffic, the waves from passing steamers wash down the banks and levee by the persistency of their continued attack. Revetment has been constructed in many locations where, if it were not for the passing steamers, it is probable that no work would have to be done. In the channels downstream from the cities of Sacramento and Stockton, the slope is quite flat and the velocities of flow of the water and likewise its erosive power, are correspondingly less than in the upper reaches of the river. Nevertheless, of the sums spent on bank revetment work since 1907 three-fourths has been spent downstream from these two cities.

Studies of the division office have revealed that the stratified formation of the banks influence their tendency to cave off, particularly under the attack of steamer waves. In many places the thick and rather hard layers of sediment constituting the river banks are separated with strata of sand, often on planes near the low water line. In such instances it has been observed that the wave action against the sand strata, washes the sand out from between the layers of hard sediment until the overtopping bank caves off in large chunks. The dropping of the large blocks of hard sediment in front of the thinner

Layer of hard sediment breaking off after sand has washed out beneath; on Sacramento River.

layers of sand delays further recession of the banks temporarily, but the chunks of sediment, although hard, seem to break up and be carried away by the current after a time. Broken rock is needed to be dumped in front of these sand strata to prevent further caving of the banks. It is estimated that $1,000,000 will be required for this purpose during the next five years.

Since the principal danger to the river banks and levees below the cities of Sacramento and Stockton is through the wave action caused by steamer traffic, it would seem proper that the federal government in its jurisdiction over navigation, should appropriate funds for the protecting of this section of the river.

SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS TO LEGISLATURE.

Reorganization.

1. Enlarge functions of the present Bond Certification Commission to include all semi-judicial actions at present incumbent upon the State Engineer or Chief of Division of Engineering and Irrigation and on the executive directors of the Water Storage District Act. Expand Bond Certification Commission to five members, with the Chief of Division of Engineering and Irrigation as executive officer, but not a commissioner. Chief of Division to make reports and recommendations to commission which is to hold public meetings, receive reports and recommendations of executive officer and hear evidence.

2. Repeal all sections of the act that place executive functions of the state's regulatory powers over irrigation developments in the Bond Certification Commission and in the executive directors of the Water Storage District Act, making it the duty of the State Engineer or Chief of Division of Engineering and Irrigation, as executive member of board, to perform these functions.

Abolishment of Cooperative Investigations with the

State Reclamation Board.

Repeal section 3 of the Reclamation Board Act which requires State Engineer to do engineering work for the Reclamation Board, and leave engineering work of State Reclamation Board to be performed by its own engineering organization. Present act leads to duplication of work in the two offices and to unnecessary confusion.

Bank Protection on Sacramento River.

California has just completed a construction program of flood control works on the Sacramento River that has entailed an expenditure of $34,000,000. This river now has 360 miles of levees with untold wealth in improvements behind them. The river must be confined to its present channel by construction of control works to prevent the undermining of the levee system completed at so great an expense. For the safety of lives and insurance on the huge sums spent in developing the overflow lands of the Sacramento Valley, $300,000 is asked for the coming biennium for rectification of river channels.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF BIENNIUM 1921-1923.

STATE WATER RESOURCES INVESTIGATION.

The first state-wide water resources investigation ever undertaken will be completed within the time limit and within the appropriation. Although delayed in starting, time and money were adequate for giving meticulous care to all aspects of available waters, present uses, costs of control, coordination of the supplies into a comprehensive plan and of the quantities procurable in the ultimate development. Extensive in scope and covering all portions of the state, it comprises data on all sources of water and its useful application and will form a compendium on California's water wealth.

Great interest has been accorded this survey of state waters by the engineering profession who rendered timely assistance, aiding the work by giving data from their office files when this was not otherwise

available to the division. During the conduct of the investigation, volumes of information, hitherto inaccessible, was compiled and graciously offered the division: contributions, gratefully acknowledged, to be absorbed and analyzed; extending the short records or supplying missing measurements; and with the independent investigations of the division, to measurably enhance the value and conduce to the completeness of the report.

Covering, as it does, the greatest area hitherto comprised in any report, this investigation has been continuously prosecuted by this office for sixteen months, has been the largest piece of work by far that has engaged the attention of the division and has occupied the greater part of the pay roll.

Chapter 889 of 1921 Statutes appropriated two hundred thousand dollars ($200,000), and instructed the State Engineer or Chief of Division, to determine the maximum amount of water which can be delivered to the maximum area of land, the maximum control of flood waters, and the maximum storage of waters, as well as all possible and practical uses of water. The State Engineer was further instructed to prepare a comprehensive plan for the accomplishment of maximum conservation, control, storage, distribution and application of all the waters of the state, together with an estimate of the cost of constructing necessary works, and to submit a report, with recommendations, to the 1923 legislature.

These investigations were initiated in August, 1921, immediately following the organization of the Department of Public Works. Following this date, a consulting board of ten members was appointed by Governor Stephens as provided for in this bill, to advise with the department during the progress of the investigations.

The division prepared a program for the collection of data and preparation of the report, which was approved by the consulting board on October 10, 1921.

The program includes:

1. Collection of all data in public and private engineering offices bearing on this investigation.

2. Analysis of stream flow at the head of the main irrigated areas on every stream.

3. Location of reservoirs on each watershed and securing data on their capacity and construction costs.

4. Classification of storage reservoirs according to cost.

5. Construction of mass diagrams of stream flow for each watershed and determination of increase in water available for irrigation purposes by the construction of reservoirs.

6. Analysis of increase in water available for irrigation purposes by utilization of ground water storage.

7. Determination of areas irrigated in 1920 on each watershed, and also the areas on each watershed which will be benefited by irrigation. 8. Determination of the water requirements of all the agricultural lands of the state.

9. Determination of area that can be irrigated on each watershed by construction of reservoirs in each of the cost classes.

10. Analysis of surplus and deficiency of supply of irrigation water on each watershed with view to developing a comprehensive plan for full utilization of all waters and the irrigation of the maximum possible area including the feasibility of diverting the surplus water from one watershed to another.

11. Estimation of the future water requirements of municipalities and the most favorable sources of supply with view to the maximum utilization of the water resources of the state for both municipal and agricultural purposes.

12. Cost estimates of construction of reservoirs on cacn watershed, and of conveying water to the head of the irrigable areas in accordance with a comprehensive plan for maximum use of the water.

13. Analysis of the effect of the construction of reservoirs on flood. flows.

14. Analysis of power development possible on each stream by the construction of reservoirs, including the feasibility of diverting surplus water from one drainage basin to another, first considering primary use of water for irrigation, and second, the primary use of water for power.

15. Classification of power development by cost per horsepower.

16. Study of means for preventing the encroachment of salt water in river estuaries.

17. Summary of information on effects of deforestation on stream flow.

The division then prepared detail schedules for the accomplishment of this program within the sixteen months then remaining before the convening of the 1923 legislature. The report is being assembled with four appendices in which the data and technical discussions pertaining to it are arranged. These are entitled:

"A" Flow in California Streams.

"B"

Irrigation Requirements of California Lands. Utilization of the Water Resources of California. "D" Relation of Settlement to Irrigation Development.

The construction of irrigation works alone does not cause intensive agricultural development. Large areas of agricultural land, under irrigation, which do not produce adequate returns on land values and costs of irrigation structures, stand as evidence. For this reason the "Relation of Settlement to Irrigation Development" was added to the program originally laid out. It requires many more people for the intensive farming of irrigated land than for the old methods of dry farming large acreages, and unless these people arrive after the construction of the works, there will be a loss in capital investment in the irrigation works. The Division of Land Settlement and the University of California are cooperating with the Division of Engineering and Irrigation in this phase of the inquiry.

The report is being prepared along comprehensive lines and every possible advantage is being taken of data and information already assembled by others. All the engineering offices of the state, both