WSP00256 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

; lJ ... ,..... .LviV detriment of sport and recreation, as wel! as rIver operations. Men soon realized that in order to develop the full potential of beneficial use of the lower Colorado, heroic measures would be needed to pre\'ent the re- curring damage of flood and drought, to consen.'e and regulate the high flows, to provide a more uniformly dependoble supply in dry periods, and to control the channel and its silt load. Such measures were con- ceived, proposed and debored in the eorly decades of this century, but emergent political problems delayed physical accomplishment until rhe middle of rhe fourth decade, when Hoo\"er Dam and powetplant were fin- ished, Other facilities followed, Any move to tamper with an interstate stream, for better or worse, soon uncovers a multiplicity of hu- man problems-problems of authority to construct, operate and control, of interstate nod intersectional priorit)' of wnter rights. safegunrding of future poten- tials, sharing of lioonciol burdens, and rhe like, The Colorado \Vas no exception. Conflicts of interest loomed in large proportions, many of them flaring repearedly jnto open controversy jn the national po- litical arena nod eventually in the United States Su- preme Courr. The outgrowth of these conflicts. nor yet ended, is a bod:' of legislative and legal documents which we now call the "Law of the River". It comprises two interstate compncts, a treaty with ^,Iexico. several fed- eral and state statutes, an interngency priority agree- ment in California, numerous water and power con- tracts, and a Supreme COUrt decree. The Imperial Valley Saga The soga of Imperial Valley development is par- ticularly dramatic and signific:mt in the annals of Californio and the Colorado River, It emphasizes the need for both physical and legal control of the inter- state stream. It is a story of man's struggle to control an unruly river and to use jts waters to convert a naked, b~rning Iond into one of the greatest agricul- tural producers of the western hemisphere. It took men of great courage and vigor, a lot of Sweat and tears, and no doubt some blood, to win the struggle, The early settlers had more thon their share of bad luck, Therein lies the genesis of the Law of the River, The river and its heavy silt load almost doomed the Imperial Valley enterprise before it was fairly started, In November 1905, barely four years after ar- rival of the first irrigation water, the intake structure on the river had so silted up that not enough water could be diverred into the canal, and the crops were in danger. A temporary intake was cut in the soft river bnnk farther downstream, in J\1exico. Unforrunately\ the river chose that same time to go on a rampage. it soon took out the make-shift intake, ond one morning the settlers awoke to find the entire flood roaring down their canal, overflowing it and carving two great gorges down the valley, and rapidly inundating the norural sink below sea level in the center of the basin, (Salton Sea did not exist until then,) Heroic efforts to close the break were only intermittently successful until February 1907, when the Southern Pacific Railroad, at the behest of Presi- dent Theodore Roosevelt to whom the local officials had appealed, fioolly accomplished the feor, Whole trains of granite boulders were dumped, cars and all, into the breach. Meantime, however, the river had gouged two wide, deep channels through rhe vaUey lands and had created Salton Sea, which has never been dry since and which serves ns the sump for salty agricultural drainage water from the Mexicali, Im- perial and Coachella volleys, It is as solty as the oceon, ond obout 34 miles long and 235 feet below seo leveL ~~ow more or less stabilized, it serves as a U.s. naval air base and as a vast recreational area and wildlife refuge, If the ri\'er break of 1905-07 had not been closed before the headward erosion of the two overflow gorges reached the natural channel, aU would have been lost, A romontic bestseller of 1910, "The Win- ning of Barhara 'North," by Harold Bell Wright, is built around the break and the heroic and costly ef- forts to return the river to its outlet in the Gulf of California, A fter the break was closed and levees built in J\1exico to protcct against a recurrence, the valley was still plagued by silt which choked headworks and conals ond piled up on the leveled lands. Annual floods on the river, alternating with low flows, made diver- sion into the heading a continual problem, Political difficulties of operating a canal which ran through a foreign country became more and more vexing. Obvi- ously needed were large storage capacity for regu- lating the river, and a canal free from iry.ternational entanglements. Efforts to secure such improvements, joined by aU Southern California, eventually brought about Con- gressioool authori7,ation of the AU-American Canal and desilting works, oil on United States' soil, and a dam at Boulder Conyon (Hoover Dam) ro regulate the river, but not without years of political struggle against strong criticism and opposition. 11