Water in Phoenix, Arizona


Every once in a while someone mentions to me that the water in Phoenix is drying up, and that the city is near a crisis state. Then inevitably they mention the droughts in California, and the Colorado River and the Hoover Dam. And then, at the risk of hurting feelings, I mention that Phoenix has been around since 1870, that the Hoover Dam was built in 1939, and that the water from the Colorado River didn't even reach Phoenix until the 1980s. And that's when people ask me "then where does the water come from?", and I point to the canals.

Yes, a small percentage of water for Phoenix comes from the Colorado River, but the vast majority comes from the Salt River. And if you look at a map of Phoenix and look at that big empty thing labelled "The Salt River", just south of the airport, I can understand your concern. There's no water in it (well, maybe a little around Tempe), but the river is still there, in the canals.

The canal just north of me, the Arizona Canal, was completed in 1885. And the water in it is snowmelt and rainwater from the uplifted areas northeast of Phoenix. The water is captured by a series of dams north of Apache Junction, and the water flows to just west of where I am right now, to flow into the Agua Fria River. And along the way there are water treatment plants to process fresh water so that I can make coffee and take a shower.

Phoenix is in the desert. But it wasn't plunked down in the middle of the desert hundreds of miles away from water. The Salt River flowed right past it. The Hohokams knew this, and so did the pioneers. Water didn't need to flow through miles of aqueducts, it just needed to be dammed and channeled. And over the years more dams were built, until the biggest one, the Roosevelt Dam, was built in 1911.

Phoenix manages its water well. Water here in the desert isn't an afterthought, it's something that was critically important from the day that Phoenix was founded. The engineering is spectacular, for bringing water in, and taking it away. And if you've never noticed it, that's not surprising. Many huge engineering projects are virtually invisible, like the Diversion Channel, or Tres Rios, which is for sewage treatment. And those big tanks on Lincoln Drive just south of Piestewa Peak are for fresh water treatment. I've driven past them a million times, and they aren't hidden, but very few people I talk to even realize that they're there.

Conserving water and managing it well is vitally important to the city of Phoenix. I wish that I could say thank you to the people who have done it so we'll, like SRP and the Maricopa County Flood Control District. I think I will - thank you! Great job! Keep up the good work for at least another 100 years!

Thank you to my patrons on Patreon who help support History Adventuring! If you like these blog posts, and would like to make suggestions for future ones, please go to patreon.com/PhoenixHistoryAdventuring where you can show your support for as little as $1 a month. Thank you!

What Patreon is http://bradhallart.blogspot.com/2016/03/supporting-creators-on-web-with-patreon.html

Comments

  1. T.A.CallenderOctober 17, 2015 at 1:29 PM

    great story, I'm 3rd gen from AZ and I miss Phoenix the most.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownOctober 18, 2015 at 2:57 PM

    My grandfather worked for the city of Phoenix water service department as an engineer since the 50's (2nd gen Mexican graduated from ASU in the 50s) and he always said how well water management is in our city is run compared to anywhere else in the world. The key is conservation.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownOctober 18, 2015 at 5:33 PM

    I live only a few blocks from the Deer Valley Water Treatment Plant, which is on the south bank of the Arizona Canal @ 31st Ave & Dunlap. I'm pretty sure the reason the water pressure in my house is so good & strong, is my close proximity to the treatment plant.

    ReplyDelete
  4. bbrownMarch 30, 2016 at 5:22 AM

    The best way to manage our water use would be to price it like it's scarce instead of keeping it artificially cheap (among the cheapest in the nation):

    http://www.circleofblue.org/2015/world/price-of-water-2015-up-6-percent-in-30-major-u-s-cities-41-percent-rise-since-2010/

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more