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One “drop” at a time… New Reclamation reservoir to provide additional water storage for the Southwest

Posted by: Maven on January 3, 2010 at 7:03 am

drop 2 constructionFrom the Bureau of Reclamation:

“An innovative, cooperative water conservation project is taking shape in the Southern California desert just north of the Mexican border. Constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation and funded by partners from three states, the project – known as the Drop 2 Storage Reservoir – will save, on average, 23 billion gallons of Colorado River water per year.

The project’s name refers to the reservoir’s location just north of the All-American Canal’s Drop Structure Number 2, about 30 miles east of El Centro, California. A “drop structure” is a point where water drops from one canal section into another at a lower elevation.

This portion of the Drop 2 project – the outlet structure – will allow water to flow from the reservoir back into the All-American Canal for delivery to farms and businesses in the Imperial Valley.The reservoir will capture river water that has been released from Parker Dam near Lake Havasu City, Arizona, to meet downstream water orders that have been suddenly cancelled for a variety of reasons. For example, a farm that is heavily rained on may cancel or reduce its order of Colorado River water, or a city could reduce its request because of unexpected canal maintenance. But since the water takes up to 3 days to reach its destination after it’s released from Parker Dam, the cancellation requests may have come too late to hold the water in Lake Havasu. And since there are limited places to store this non-usable water downstream of the dam, it usually flows to Mexico.

The United States is required by an international treaty to supply 1.5 million acre-feet (about 500 billion gallons) of Colorado River water to Mexico each year. But the extra water that flows into Mexico from cancelled water orders is not credited toward this requirement. So the United States is building the Drop 2 Storage Reservoir to help the American Southwest more efficiently use its precious – and limited – Colorado River resources. … “

Find out more about the Drop 2 Reservoir project from the Bureau of Reclamation by clicking here. Click here for extensive photo gallery of the construction.

January 3, 2010 · Filed Under Colorado River & the Southwest

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