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October 14, 2010
CVWD's Imperial Dam Tour
In the CVWD control room in Coachella. the vast map covers all of the Coachella Valley and extends down to the beginning of the Coachella Canal near the Mexican border. Digital displays tell the operators the volume of water passing through that particular point. The display also shows the amount of water in each of the district's reservoirs. The display at the Colorado River Aqueduct near the recharge facility on Worsely Road in Desert Hot Springs does NOT indicate the volume of water flowing from the aqueduct into the recharge facility, if any. No, what it does show is the flood levels of Mission Creek.
We traveled down to Imperial. On the way we passed through what had been two canals prior to the 1906 flood that created the Salton Sea. During that flood, those canals became the Colorado River, which chewed them into the big, deep cuts that are now the New and Alamo Rivers. In Imperial we paid a brief stop at the Pioneers Museum which wasn't open that early, but the grounds are full of interesting antique farming and construction equipment, which I will have to return to photograph someday.
We stopped to see the remains of the Plank Road.
"Drop #1" on the All American Canal. The Coachella Canal branches off at this point.
The start of the Coachella Canal. The Coachella Canal branches off to the right. Over there are two big tanks of some form of chlorine which is injected into this Colorado River water in order to prevent quagga mussels from getting into the Coachella Canal. They are in the Colorado River, but so far none have been detected in the Coachella Canal.
The branch to the left is much newer than the Coachella Canal. It is designed to reroute water that was first ordered by a farmer and then cancelled due to rain or some other desert tragedy. (It takes 3 to 4 days from the time it is ordered for water to be delivered to a farm.) In the past that water was just dumped back into the Colorado River, but now the policy is not to let Mexico have any water in excess of its 1.5 million acre-feet allotment. So this new canal diverts that now-unneeded water into a retention basin where it is held until it is need by some Imperial Valley farmer.
Imperial Diversion Dam where the water for the All American Canal is taken out of the Colorado. Actually, ALL of the Colorado's water goes into canals or aqueducts. The water that is destined for Mexico travels a few miles south, is dropped through a hydropower facility and then back into the Colorado River channel to flow into Mexico.
"Water" by Charles Sheeler. I photographed this painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC in April 2008, but I'd completely forgotten it until today when I got an email from Flickr friends Echo_29 pointing out the obvious similarity. The subject of Sheeler's painting, however, is a TVA dam and was painted in 1945.
On the return route we stopped at a high point in the Algodones Dunes. In the far background you can see the biggest open pit gold mine in America. Well, what you see is mountains of tailings from the biggest open pit gold mine in America. Google Maps satellite view of that gold mine.
The complete set of photos from the tour is here.
This is an annual tour. Cost was $25 and the size is limited to one busload. Lunch and a continental breakfast is included. There are many sights that I couldn't photograph because we didn't even get out of the bus. The tour guide provides tons of useful and clear information along the way. Informative videos are shown on the bus. I now completely and perfectly understand everything about western water policy. If Arizona would simply stop using water, everything would be hunky-dory. To find out about next year's tour, keep an eye on the CVWD website.
As an example of some of the additional information provided by our tour guide, he told us about The Saving Of Barbara Worth, a novel about a love triangle set amidst the building of the first canal which led to the flooding that created the Salton Sea. It was made into a movie in 1926 which was Gary Cooper's first credited role in a feature length film. You can buy the DVD on Amazon or get it from Netflix. Here are some excerpts from user reviews on Netflix:
And speaking of scenery, here it upstages not only the story, but the actors as well. This is a beautifully photographed film, and the majesty of the camera work is well-preserved in the DVD. All things considered, the print is amazing.
Conventional love story but with an impressive devastating flood scene for a silent film. Liked the continuity and fast pacing, quite unlike those foreign silent films where actors stare at the camera for ages while going into facial convulsions and eye popping to convey dialogue and emotions.
IMDB says the movie was shot not in the Imperial Valley (of course, by 1926 it was a green Garden of Eden), but in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada — that is, at the future location of Burning Man!
For readers, you can buy the book on Amazon or read it in the Google Books version or download it for free from Project Gutenberg - including one version in Kindle-ized format.
Filed under California,Coachella Valley | permalink | October 14, 2010 at 12:48 PM
Comments
Google has taught me that the filtration plant in Chicago is called the Jardine Water Purification Plant. It's just north of the Navy Pier, and many, many websites are happy to tell me it is the biggest in the world.
Can't find any info on potential tours, though. I can see the Field Museum organized one about a year ago, and there are one-off tours for special groups, like an engineers convention. If you've got any info on future public tours, send it along please.
Posted by: Ron's Log at Oct 15, 2010 10:20:11 AM
If you're ever in Chicago, be sure to tour the downtown Water Filtration Plant.
Posted by: b at Oct 15, 2010 7:44:27 AM
Thanks for this, Ron. Really interesting and certainly educational.
Posted by: Earl Marble at Oct 14, 2010 1:38:35 PM
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