Pasadena Star News
By: Cynthia Kurtz
Posted: 4/17/2014
Southern California’s economy - the eighth largest in the world - requires a mix of ingredients among them skilled labor, materials, power, a transportation system, markets and water. Southern California is blessed with natural resources that make it easy to find, make, or bring many of these ingredients here. Water is the notable exception.
As you know, we are experiencing a serious drought and finding enough water is a problem. It isn’t a new problem. In the 1930’s Southern California leaders realized that the lack of water was the Achilles heel of the region’s future. Their solutions had all the makings of a Hollywood fiction film but it is a true story.
It started in the San Gabriel Valley when elected official from 13 cities met in Pasadena to discuss their mutual problem – the region was running out of water. To them, the answer was simple. They needed to find a place with a surplus of water and bring that water to Southern California.
What they ultimately resolved to do became one of the most complex engineering solutions ever designed. The place they found that had water was in another state separated by 242 miles of mountains, deserts, rocks, and scorching temperatures.
Accepting the challenges, the determined group moved ahead and created the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. In January 1933 Metropolitan began building the Colorado River Aqueduct. With $220 million of voter approved bond funding - that is right $220 million in the middle of the depression. Everyone knows you need water.
Without the federal government’s decision to tame the flood waters of the Colorado River by building Hoover Dam, the Colorado River Aqueduct would not have been possible. Hoover Dam made it possible for Metropolitan to begin building Parker Dam which forms Lake Havasu a Mojave word meaning “blue.” The lake is 45 miles long and stores 600,000 acre feet of water.
The Whitsett Intake Pumping Station, the first of five pumping stations in the project, lifts water from Lake Havasu 291-feet into Gene Wash Reservoir. Two miles west the Gene Pumping Station lifts water 303 feet into Copper Basin. From there gravity takes the water 67 miles west through a network of aqueducts, pipelines and tunnels to Iron Mountain Pumping Station. Here the water is lifted 144 feet before it begins its 41 mile trip to Eagle Mountain.
The two largest lifts are the last the water reaches. Eagle Mountain Pumping Station lifts the water 438 into Cotton tunnel. Sixteen miles west, Julian Hinds Pumping Station lifts the water the last 441 feet.
It’s all downhill from there - 116 miles down hill - towards Lake Mathews in Riverside County. Water from Lake Matthew goes to the Weymouth Water Treatment Plan in La Verne to serve the SGV and the metropolitan area beyond. Some water is diverted before it reaches the Lake and heads south to San Diego.
The total trip includes 58 miles of pipeline, 63 miles of lined canals, 29 miles of inverted siphons and 92 miles of tunnels. It took 35,000 workers working eight hour shifts, 24-hours a day, 365 days a year, and eight years to complete the project.
Those 13 leaders understood that big problems needed big solutions. That was true then and it is true today.
By: Cynthia Kurtz
Posted: 4/17/2014
Southern California’s economy - the eighth largest in the world - requires a mix of ingredients among them skilled labor, materials, power, a transportation system, markets and water. Southern California is blessed with natural resources that make it easy to find, make, or bring many of these ingredients here. Water is the notable exception.
As you know, we are experiencing a serious drought and finding enough water is a problem. It isn’t a new problem. In the 1930’s Southern California leaders realized that the lack of water was the Achilles heel of the region’s future. Their solutions had all the makings of a Hollywood fiction film but it is a true story.
It started in the San Gabriel Valley when elected official from 13 cities met in Pasadena to discuss their mutual problem – the region was running out of water. To them, the answer was simple. They needed to find a place with a surplus of water and bring that water to Southern California.
What they ultimately resolved to do became one of the most complex engineering solutions ever designed. The place they found that had water was in another state separated by 242 miles of mountains, deserts, rocks, and scorching temperatures.
Accepting the challenges, the determined group moved ahead and created the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. In January 1933 Metropolitan began building the Colorado River Aqueduct. With $220 million of voter approved bond funding - that is right $220 million in the middle of the depression. Everyone knows you need water.
Without the federal government’s decision to tame the flood waters of the Colorado River by building Hoover Dam, the Colorado River Aqueduct would not have been possible. Hoover Dam made it possible for Metropolitan to begin building Parker Dam which forms Lake Havasu a Mojave word meaning “blue.” The lake is 45 miles long and stores 600,000 acre feet of water.
The Whitsett Intake Pumping Station, the first of five pumping stations in the project, lifts water from Lake Havasu 291-feet into Gene Wash Reservoir. Two miles west the Gene Pumping Station lifts water 303 feet into Copper Basin. From there gravity takes the water 67 miles west through a network of aqueducts, pipelines and tunnels to Iron Mountain Pumping Station. Here the water is lifted 144 feet before it begins its 41 mile trip to Eagle Mountain.
The two largest lifts are the last the water reaches. Eagle Mountain Pumping Station lifts the water 438 into Cotton tunnel. Sixteen miles west, Julian Hinds Pumping Station lifts the water the last 441 feet.
It’s all downhill from there - 116 miles down hill - towards Lake Mathews in Riverside County. Water from Lake Matthew goes to the Weymouth Water Treatment Plan in La Verne to serve the SGV and the metropolitan area beyond. Some water is diverted before it reaches the Lake and heads south to San Diego.
The total trip includes 58 miles of pipeline, 63 miles of lined canals, 29 miles of inverted siphons and 92 miles of tunnels. It took 35,000 workers working eight hour shifts, 24-hours a day, 365 days a year, and eight years to complete the project.
Those 13 leaders understood that big problems needed big solutions. That was true then and it is true today.
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