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Chamber Tours Colorado River Aqueduct

By Angelika Villagrana

After the November 2007 educational inspection tour of the State Water Project-San Joaquin Delta, members of the Chamber’s Infrastructure, International and Technology Committees were invited by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), in partnership with the San Diego County Water Authority (CWA), to visit the Colorado River Aqueduct (CRA) system and learn how water is moved from the Colorado River to San Diego. 

The highlight of the tour was a visit to Hoover Dam, approximately 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas. The Dam, an engineering marvel, was built in the 30’s to regulate the supply of water from the Colorado River.  Hoover Dam rises more than 700 feet above the waters of the Colorado River.  Its reservoir, Lake Mead, is the largest man-made lake in the United States and is large enough to store two years of the Colorado River’s annual flow. The Chamber group was invited to visit the power plant in the base of the Dam.  Its 17 main turbines generate more than 4 billion kilowatt-hours a year of low-cost hydroelectric power, which serves 1.3 million people in Nevada, Arizona and California.

After following the Colorado River for the next 3.5 hours, the group arrived at the Whitsett Intake Pumping Plant on Lake Havasu near the California-Arizona border.  Each of the plant’s nine big pumps can push 200 cubic feet of water from the lake to a tunnel 281 feet above in one second of time.  From there, the water pours into Gene Wash Reservoir and then starts its journey to Lake Mathews near Riverside, California. 

On the trip back to San Diego, the group followed MWD’s 242 mile Colorado River Aqueduct, which consists of two reservoirs, five pumping plants, 63 miles of canals, 92 miles of tunnels and 84 miles of buried conduit and siphons.  The CRA has a capacity of 1.3 million acre-feet per year (one acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons of water).

During the many stops, CWA and MWD personnel explained the various facilities and provided briefings on historical and current water issues.  Visiting the aqueduct system gave participants in the trip and the Chamber a better understanding about the importance of this water delivery system on our region, and how fragile our water situation is.  We learned that despite storm activity over the winter, our region’s water supplies remain impacted by extremely dry conditions around California over the last year that significantly reduced storage in key reservoirs, as well as by an eight-year drought in the Colorado River basin.  Additionally, recent court-ordered pumping restrictions in the Bay-Delta cut water supplies from the State Water Project.

We cannot ignore that we are in a water crisis, and we all must do our share to conserve water.  Please join the Chamber in promoting the CWA’s “20-Gallon Challenge,” www.20gallonchallenge.com, calling on residents and businesses to help our region reduce its water use by 20 gallons per person per day.