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WJKEIGER

Posted 3/9/2019 13:12 (#7369448)
Subject: For you guys wintering in Arizona

nw NC

Reading dairyman78's post below, caused me to look at the area on google maps and satellite view. I saw areas of irrigated farming, indicated obviously by the green pivot circles and rectangles. Zooming for closer views showed dark blue-green lines across the brown and gray barren land. Zoom in more and the lines are seen to be concrete lined water canals. I followed the canals from where it started 8.60 miles from the Parker Dam on the Colorado river south of Lake Havasu City to north of the Phoenix metro area. I googled and learned that water is pumped 800 feet of elevation and then through a seven mile tunnel through a mountain to where it empties into the open canal. There are sections of the canal that end at what must be pumping stations to lift water to higher elevations. Also sections that disappear where water is piped through land-form barriers. Satellite pictures below show areas where I followed the canal.

A question for dairyman78 (who I believe is at a park near Brenda, AZ.).
In the irrigated area just south of Highway 60 between Desert Wells and Hope (picture 7), there does not appear to be any open canal that would flow water to the fields. Is water pumped to the land or is that farm irrigated from ground water wells? The farm area is a large dairy operation as when zoomed in I can see Holsteins lined up along the feed bunks. The circles are obviously alfalfa production. What about the square and rectangular fields , corn? How are they irrigated , furrow or lateral roll lines? Square fields measure about 34 acres , rectangles about 72. For fields in the Wenden area, might they be vegetables? Does not appear to be any cattle facilities there.

I found some info about the Central Arizona Project which stated ;

The CAP System is AN ENGINEERING MARVEL

Construction of the CAP system began in Lake Havasu in 1973 and was completed 20 years later south of Tucson at a cost of more than $4 billion. The result is an engineering marvel that pumps water uphill. Water enters the system at Mark Wilmer Pumping Plant where six 66,000 horsepower pumps lift water more than 800 vertical feet into the seven-mile long Buckskin Mountain Tunnel. It then flows into the open canal where it continues its journey across the state.
A complex system

The canal system stretches 336 miles, lifts the water more than 2,900 feet in elevation over the course of the system and includes 14 pumping plants, one hydroelectric pump/generating plant at New Waddell Dam, Lake Pleasant storage reservoir, 39 radial gate structures to control the flow of water and more than 50 turnouts to deliver water.

System Facts:

Reach 1 is the first section of the canal and is wider and deeper than the rest of the system. It acts as an internal reservoir system and holds 20% of all the water in the canal at any time.
CAP is the largest single power user in the state, using up to 2.8 million megawatt hours per year, roughly the amount used by 250,000 homes.
The canal loses approximately 16,000 acre-feet a year to evaporation, which is about 1% of the annual flow.
The canal descends approximately 5” per mile.
Depending on flow, water takes 5-7 days to go from beginning to end of the aqueduct.
As water in the canal progresses west to east, the size of both the pumping plants and aqueduct diminishes.

Here is a link describing the project and showing construction pictures.
https://www.usbr.gov/lc/phoenix/AZ100/1970/topstory.html

Also a link to Arizona water shortage coming... https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/20/phoenix-least-sustain...

Edited by WJKEIGER 3/9/2019 13:50