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FIGURE 2. - Flooding at East Jefferson Avenue and South Emerson Street in Englewood, caused by the overflow of Little Dry Creek. Denver Post photograph by John Prieto, May 6, 1973. senal, intercepting many small drainages en route. HighIine Canal was out of its banks in many places (fig. 4), especially in southeast Denver, where many basements were flooded. At Wellshire Municipal Golf Course it threat- ened Skeel Reservoir, which has no spillway and nearly overtopped its dam, Downstream at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, overflow from the canal and the Montbello ditch breached Up- per Derby dam, sent a surge of water into Lower Derby Lake, and threatened Irondale, 3 miles to the northwest. According to Quentin Hornback of the Denver Water Board (oral commun" relayed by Robert M. Lindvall) many small tributaries of the South Platte poured water into canals and ditches, such as HighIine, In Lakewood, much of the flood damage was caused by overflowing irrigation ditches. Spill- age from Main Reservoir, taking excessive in- flow from Welch ditch, flooded West Mississippi A venue for 18 hours between South Kipling and South Garrison Streets (The Lakewood Sentinel, May 10, 1973). Normally, overflow of Main Reservoir is handled by Weir Gulch. In Edgewater, sluggish drainage from an overflowing ditch backed up sewers in a four- block area near West 20th Avenue and Sheri- dan Boulevard, sent raw sewage into numerous basements, and caused the street to be closed for several hours. The problem has been recur- rent. It was not caused exclusively by the storm, but it was aggravated by the storm. The Edge- water Volunteer Fire Department ultimately was forced to pump the water and sewage into nearby Sloans Lake in order to reopen street traffic (The Denver Post, May 9, 1973; The Lakewood Sentinel, May 10, 1973). Similar sewer backups were reported over wide areas of Greater Denver, the cause, for the most part, being the same: sanitary sewers were simply 5