STORIES FROM THE PAST

50 years ago

Leon Kennedy, director of Coachella Valley Water District, was elected chairman of the Salton Sea Advisory Committee yesterday in Coachella during a joint meeting of a federal-state task force with the committee.

In June of this year Gov. Ronald Reagan signed into law a bill which created the committee of local citizens and directed the State Resources Agency to work in cooperation with the committee in its studies on the Salton Sea.

J.C. Reeves, Brawley farmer and member of Imperial County Farm Bureau Water Committee was elected vice chairman yesterday.

The state of California was represented by Ford B. Ford and John Tooker of the State Resources Agency, and by Jack Coe of the Department of Water Resources.

Representing the federal government were William Davorn of the Department of Interior, and Donald Woltersdorf and A.B. West of the Bureau of Reclamation.

Assemblyman Victor V. Veysey of Brawley, who has spearheaded the drive in his district to salvage the sea from its increasing salinity, yesterday reviewed the cobweb of agencies and bureaus and the steps to be taken before any concrete action is finally taken.

The picture he painted suggested years of work ahead.

40 years ago

Call Heber another big dream town that never materialized in Imperial County.

Heber was one of the earliest planned towns in the Valley. When the Imperial Land Company planned the first towns in the Valley at the turn of the century, a settlement between Imperial and Calexico was thought to be a good idea.

So a settlement named Paringa was laid out some distance from the present Heber townsite. The name Paringa was selected because it was the name of George Chaffey’s settlement in Australia, where he had been engaged in developing a reclamation project.

Chaffey was involved with the Imperial Land Company, working under the direction of the California Development Company.