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Never-built reservoirs could have captured runoff Page 1 of2 000111 azcentral.com ill, Email this article Print this article Most popular pages Click to send Click to print Today I This Week Never-built reservoirs could have captured runoff Shaun McKinnon The Arizona Republic Jan. 4, 2005 12:00 AM Some of the storm runoff flowing down the Salt River this week will seep into the ground, filling aquifers with water that can be pumped out later, but much of it will wind up at a federal flood control project near Gila Bend, beyond the reach of Valley homes and businesses. The flow will likely continue for weeks and, if the wet weather patterns settle in through the winter, for months, as the Salt River Project works to protect its swollen Verde River reservoirs and make room for potential snowmelt in the spring. Water is already beginning to collect behind Painted Rock Dam south of Phoenix, where it will stay and either sink into the ground, evaporate or continue down the Gila River toward Yuma. The SRP was forced to release water into the normally dry Salt River last week after a powerful Pacific storm filled Horseshoe and Bartlett reservoirs. SRP officials say they would prefer not to lose water, especially after nine years of drought conditions, but they simply ran out of room to store water, limited by the size and location of their reservoirs. Two never-built reservoirs on the lower Verde could have captured the storm runoff, storing for future use the billions of gallons of water now flowing down the Salt, but public opposition killed the proposed reservoirs in the 1970s and 1980s. That left the Verde with so little storage capacity that the two reservoirs that were built, Horseshoe and Bartlett, fill quickly and leave the SRP with no alternative than spilling water down the normally dry Salt River. "We wouldn't want to release water we could potentially store," said Charlie Ester, the SRP's water resource operations manager. "We're certainly doing this with utmost caution with regard to our water supply. There's simply more water coming into our reservoirs than we can store." The SRP maintained a steady release of water Monday from the Granite Reef diversion dam on the Valley's far east side. With more storms lined up off the Pacific Coast, Ester said the Salt will flow with excess runoff through this week and into next. Water is flowing through Tempe Town Lake at about 17,000 cubic feet per second, Tempe spokeswoman Kris Baxter said. At that rate, the lake will be emptying and refilling roughly every three hours. Ester said the storms pushing through Arizona this week could produce more runoff on the Salt River watershed, which would be good news. Roosevelt Lake, the uppermost reservoir on the Salt, is only about 33 percent full and could hold more than 1 million acre-feet of water. The two Verde River reservoirs hold only 287,000 acre-feet combined, which is why water is being lost down the lower Salt this week. An acre-foot is 325,851 gallons, http://www . azcentra1.comlphp-binl clicktracklprint. php ?referer=http://www.azcentra1.coml...1/24/2005