Irrigation In Yuma Research Paper

Ciera Walton

Coursework

Ploude 1

Irrigation In Yuma

Intro

“Describe in detail how irrigation changed Yuma/Southern Arizona?”

Irrigation has been a cause in Yuma/Southern Arizona because of the heat, low flow, and the dry deserts. This made irrigation very difficult in 1900s because without water we wouldn’t be able to grow our crops throughout the years, this limited many areas and lands as well. It also makes it very hard to contain and carry out water all across the country. One of the main rivers Arizona has is the Colorado River. It flows all across the West, including Arizona, Nevada, Tucson and also Las Vegas. This river helped changed irrigation because it gives the people more water, and it brought more population into their

With having low flow in the Dam it affected the Colorado River, other rivers, canals and dams too. But whenever we did have floodings the cost was very high to try and building and fixing it back up. For example, in the spring/summer of 1905, an insane flood hit the lower part of the river as a flash flood. This flood ended up changing the flow of the water uncontrollable and ended up leading into the Imperial Valley. This river connects with the Colorado River as well, and now flows into Southern California 100 yards north of the US Mexico border. The river later turned away flowing West, and led into the Southern California Salton Sink river. Many of these floods are very hard, because they may end up changing their way of flow or the insane amount of damage not only to the Dams and rivers but too the people as well. The people in the Southwest tried getting the federal government's attention for help from all of the damage and work that needed to be done. “The responsibility for alleviating the situation fell on the department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation.” Pg.11 They noticed how bad the situation was so they tried stopping it. Engineers came to try to protect the low flow, valleys, flooding and stable

Not only does is affect our area in Yuma but other countries too that our water flows through. The Yuma Project all started from Theodore Roosevelt. He purchased an abandoned Fort Yuma Military Reservation in Arizona for all the different irrigation projects to be worked on. They also purchased and maintained different water supplies and operations until they were able to maintain their own supply of water. Earlier in the 1900’s the Yuma Project systems showed unsatisfactory with all the floods and grvaity effecting the system.In 1908 Yuma had to fight for their Yuma Project because it never fully went through the court. “The Irrigation Land and Improvement Co. foughtReclamation's takeover through legal action, eventually ending up in the U.S. Supreme Court” Pg. 7 They ended up finally owning 3.6 miles of canals and 18 miles of laterals. During the time they were building up the Yuma Projets many floods began to hit. A huge flood hit in 1912, 1916 and also in the 1918’s. The floods caused so many breaks, holes, shortage and overall a lot of damage. This damage was being prepared by some unskilled laborers and skilled laborers. “World War I hampered repairs on the levee by causing a shortage of unskilled and skilled labor on the project.Unskilled laborers received $2.25-$3.00 a day while skilled workers collected $4.50-$5.256.” Pg. 7 This cause made it even more difficult for the people during war to work will be rebuilding