Go-Ahead for C.V.C.

The Cauca River rises in the mountains of southern Colombia, foams furiously down their steep slopes, then runs placidly northward through a balmy (average temperature 78DEG), verdant valley. The Cauca Valley, twelve miles wide and 125 miles long, is the country's most bounteous food producer--bananas, sugar, potatoes, coffee, rice, beef, milk. Its center is the warmhearted city of Cali, whose 500.000 inhabitants manage to combine plenty of industrial zip (in tires, leather, drugs, textiles) with a pleasant, semitropical way of life that still reserves the time from noon to 2:30 for lunch and siesta. Yet the valley's people believe its development has hardly begun; last week they were taking the first steps to turn the Cauca into South America's most impressive replica of the U.S.'s Tennessee Valley Authority.

Concrete Commitment. Two years ago Cali industrialists persuaded the government to invite David Lilienthal, onetime chairman of TVA, down for a look, and frankly tapped their guest for advice and know-how. Serving willingly (and without fee), Lilienthal briefly studied the valley and recommended the creation of a developmental agency. Since then, the Cauca Valley Corp., working closely with a mission from the World Bank, has been gathering the engineering data needed to fix its own goal and methods. The objective, as finally visualized, became nothing less than a quick and dramatic boost in the standard of living of the valley's 3,000,000 people, to be achieved mainly by power production and control over crop-destroying floods, but also by related programs of education, road building and better farming.

Last month, with planning far enough along for construction to begin, C.V.C. asked President Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, chips down, whether it could have the heavy grants needed to get going. The President unhesitatingly pledged the government to spend $64 million.

Powerful Plans. Work started immediately at Calima, a power dam on the Pacific-flowing Calima River needed to supply 120,000 kw. for electricity-starved Cali by late 1959. Next year another dam will begin to rise at Timba, which in 1962 will begin to generate 60,000 kw. of power and curb the yearly floods that cover a quarter of the valley's million acres. Transmission lines will go up to tie the dams and a newly completed plant at Anchicaya (begun before C.V.C. was conceived) to power users. Work will start in 1959 on the system's biggest dam at Sal-vajina. Other projects: flood channels, levees, irrigation ditches, and enough steam plants to bring generating capacity to 660,000 kw. (v. TVA's 9,000,000 kw.).

Once C.V.C. is in business, it will become selfsupporting, but the initial investment in dams, power plants and transmission lines will require $187 million in all (including last month's governmental commitment). A favorable report by the World Bank mission was a hint that the bank would lend a reported $20 million to $27 million for imported equipment and machinery. As for the rest. Finance Minister Carlos Villaveces has promised that "the government will see this through, come what may." To help raise funds, the government recently doubled Cauca Valley land taxes, without a murmur of complaint from the hopeful landholders.

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