These considerations raised of course the question whether it was worth while for the Southern Pacific Company to continue this work, upon which it had already spent about $1,500,000. The interests chiefly imperilled were those of the national Government. It owned all the irrigable land along the lower Colorado, including even that upon which the Imperial Valley settlers had filed.[12] It was then constructing an immense dam at Potholes, twelve miles above Yuma, upon which it had already expended about $1,000,000 (the Laguna dam) and with the water to be impounded thereby it expected to irrigate and reclaim about 90,000 acres of fertile land in Arizona and Southern California. If the uncontrolled river should continue to “cut back,” by means of its receding waterfalls, it not only would destroy the Laguna dam, and the irrigation works upon which the Imperial Valley depended for its very existence, but would eventually turn the whole bed of the lower Colorado into a gorge, out of which water for irrigation purposes could never be taken. This would make valueless more than two thousand square miles of potentially fertile land, which, if intensively cultivated, would support a quarter of a million people. The interests of the Southern Pacific Company, on the other hand, were comparatively unimportant. The traffic of the Imperial Valley, at that time, amounted to perhaps $1,200,000 a year, from which the railroad derived a revenue of only $20,000 or $30,000 for freight transportation.[13] This, in its relation to the whole business of the company, was so insignificant as hardly to be worth consideration. The flooding of the valley, moreover, could not injure the road much more than it had already been injured. A section of new line, about sixty miles in length, had been surveyed and graded, and the ties and rails for it were on the ground. At an additional cost therefore of only $50,000 or $60,000, the imperilled part of the track could be moved to a higher location where the rising waters of the Salton Sea could not reach it. President Randolph, after full investigation reported the existing state of affairs to Mr. Harriman by telegraph, and informed him that while the original break might be closed at a cost of from $300,000 to $350,000, permanent control of the river would require about twenty miles of muck-ditching[14] and levee reconstruction, and that if he (Mr. Harriman) decided to proceed with the work, he might have to spend $1,500,000 more. In view of this possibility, Mr. Randolph suggested that the Government, or the State of California, be called upon to render aid.