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<br />washed out in high spring flows. Between 1909 and 1910, the Orchard Mesa Construction <br />Company built a water diversion and delivery system taking water out of the river up in <br />DeBeque Canyon, running the water through flumes and a canal along the south side of the <br />river to a point where it was then pumped onto the mesa. The expense of constructing and <br />operating the system made the cost of the water to the irrigators more than they could afford <br />to pay. Faced with bankruptcy, the company transformed itself into the Orchard Mesa <br />Irrigation District (OMID), a public entity formed under state law and authorized to assess a <br />tax on all lands served with water within the boundaries of the district. In 1922, the <br />Reclamation Service entered into a contract with OMID under which the U,S. would divert <br />additional water at its diversion dam for the Grand Valley Project, split it off from its main <br />canal and move it under the Colorado River in a reinforced concrete siphon to the 3.5 mile <br />concrete-lined Orchard Mesa Power Canal. The Orchard Mesa Pumping Plant then would lift <br />the water as much as 130 feet to the two canals on the mesa. About 8,600 acres of land are <br />irrigated within the OMID, <br />The federally constructed Grand Valley Project itself grew out of a desire to be able to <br />irrigate lands in the Grand Valley lying above and north of the lands irrigated out of the <br />GVIC Canal. The Grand Valley Water Users Association formed in 1905 to promote this <br />reclamation project, and signed a contract with the U.S. in 1913 agreeing to pay the costs of <br />constructing the system. Much of the land to be served with water from -the Government <br />Highline Canal was still in public ownership, <br />The Reclamation Service constructed a l4-foot high, 546-foot-wide dam (Roller Dam) <br />across the Colorado River, with six "roller" gates to control flows - the first dam of this type <br />ever to be constructed in the United States. Water is diverted out of the west and north side <br />of the river into a canal with a capacity of 1,675 cubic feet per second. The canal moves <br />through three tunnels (with a portion of the flow siphoned off to the Orchard Mesa system <br />under the river between the second and third tunnels). At the Price-Stubb Pumping Plant, <br />water is made available to the Palisade Irrigation District (6,000 irrigable acres) and the Mesa <br />County Irrigation District (2,000 irrigable acres), The Highline Canal, completed in 1917, <br />extends S5 miles and carries water to about 23,300 acres of land within the Grand Valley <br />Water Users Association. Despite assurances by valley interests in 1907 that the cost of the <br /> <br />6 <br />