Los Banos Rotary Club History
Prosperity Seen Through New Canal

Charles T. Kaljian, president of the recently organized San Luis Canal District, Tuesday told members of the local Rotary Club that the planned construction of the San Luis reservoir and canal project means new people, new farms and important new money for Los Banos and other west side cities south as far as Taft. In addition, it will mean the salvation of many lands now under cultivation but which are rapidly going bad because of insufficient underground water or water of injurious quality.

Kaljian explained that the San Luis Water District was organized with the intention of receiving irrigation water from the Delta-Mendota Canal and also the proposed San Luis Canal. Owners of lands that are located to receive D-M Canal water are now either building pump and distribution systems or have such systems in the planning stage for future construction. Among such groups, Kaljian said, is the Sunset Water District, comprising some 4,800 acres, where the land owners are now completing plane for the construction of a complete water system.

The underground water table over much of this area has dropped rapidly the last few years, Kaljian said, with different famers competing with each other for the existing supply by repeatedly pushing their wells deeper and deeper into the ground. Other farmers are finding that the well water is containing an increasing amount of boron and alkali salts that are injurious to certain desirable crops.

Concerning the proposed building of San Luis reservoir and the San Luis West Side Canal, Kaljian explained that plans for this project are well underway by the Bureau of Reclamation, and that advance demand from all areas is such that the plans have been altered to provide added capacity in both reservoir and canal. The reservoir would be filled during the winter and early spring by a lift system from the D-M Canal.

Kaljian also called attention to the fact that the proposed San Luis Canal would furnish irrigation water for a large acreage of fertile land lying close to the foothills which is in a more or less frostless and fogless belt, and predicted that this section would become an agricultural wonderland. He also predicted that even higher and more rolling lands, now considered impossible of cultivation, will be developed into valuable permanent pasture land, using the sprinkler method of irrigation with water supplied from the San Luis Canal.

New Members

Two new Rotary members were officially welcomed into the club by past president L. J. Spindt. They are Jess Telles, local attorney, and Fred Ross, local insurance man. Telles is a native of Butte, Mont.; came with his family to the Firebaugh area in 1922; graduated from Dos Palos high school, University of Santa Clara and Stanford Law School. He served with the U.S. Field Artillery during World War II as a Captain. He is married and has three children. Ross, a native of Massachusetts, came to Los Banos with his parents when two years old, and is a graduate of the local schools. He is married and has one child.

January 18, 1952

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