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Category: Editorials Editorials
Published: 28 April 2014 28 April 2014

To The Editor-

A lot has been said about diversion projects on the Gila River relative to the Arizona Water Settlements Act. There are those who desire to leave the water in the river to flow on downstream to Arizona and there are those who want to divert a portion of it for use in New Mexico.

Then, there are also those who think the diversion supporters desire to build a very large dam on the Gila River for this purpose. No one can say it strong enough: There will never be a Hoover Dam (large storage dam that backs up Lake Mead on the Colorado River near Las Vegas,NV) built on the Gila River.

I spent many years as a Hydrologist working for the US Bureau of Reclamation which is an agency of the Dept of Interior. It, for many decades, constructed large dams for reclamation purposes. Now it maintains these dams and has not built a large dam since the Animas-La Plata Project in SW Colo.

There is no need for a large storage dam to divert an average annual 14,000 acre-feet of water. A large dam, but very much smaller than Hoover Dam, might be used to store diverted water in a tributary channel, but this will not be known until data and information from ongoing studies are analyzed.

So, this particular item is nothing to get excited about and also realize that anything that is constructed to divert water from the river will just pass almost all of the water except for the 14,000 acre-feet which can only be captured while following strict rules.

Gerald Schultz
Tyrone