The Imperial Valley: Permanent Oasis by Cory Phillips
Imperial County, California has been a major agricultural, political, and commercial center in Southeastern California for over 100 years. Although the peripheral agricultural activities have been the focus and source of the region’s economy, the area’s role in agribusiness has also facilitated much urban growth. The farms in the Imperial Valley bring about $1,000,000,000 to the state’s economy each year. This rural and urban expansion has been enabled, exclusively, by the delivery of water from the Colorado River, via the All-American Canal, to the otherwise desiccated rift zone by the Imperial Irrigation District (IID). To date, the Imperial Valley has no source …show more content…
The channel started in the U.S., and traced the international border in Mexico before entering the Imperial Valley. For several years, the diversion induced the settlement of two-thousand new settlers and the cultivation of a hundred-thousand acres of irrigated farmland, mostly owned by a few, wealthy landowners. Then, between 1905 and 1907, a series of heavy floods along the Gila River breached the canal and altered the Colorado River flow, sending the entire volume spilling through channels running northwest into the Salton Trough- pooling into what we know today as the Salton Sea. The valley’s agricultural advancements were lost to the deluge, but by early 1907, the flooding subsided. The Southern Pacific Railroad, who had their own particular interests to protect in the region, reset the Colorado River’s natural course through great effort and physical intervention. They sold properties acquired from the CDC’s bankruptcy to the newly formed Imperial Irrigation District (IID) in …show more content…
Department of Commerce met with the seven Colorado watershed states to delineate and allot river waters officially among them. General allotments were allocated among the upper basin, lower basin, and Mexico (7.5maf to the upper basin, 8.5maf to the lower basin, 1.5maf to Mexico), and the “Colorado Compact” was signed by the state delegates in 1922. However, it was not until Congress and the Bureau of Reclamation intervened in 1928 that the new Boulder Dam (later Hoover Dam) and All-American Canal came to fruition. The ensuing California Limitation Act, stating that California would be limited to 4.4maf of the lower basin’s allotment of the Colorado River, and Boulder Canyon Project Act, which would create the largest storage and release facility to date, gave the Imperial Valley the right, the will, and the power to fully transform the area into an agricultural oasis. The Hoover Dam was completed in 1936, and the All-American Canal was flowing from the Imperial Dam by 1942. Imperial Irrigation District constituents paid the full expense of the large-scale project back to the federal government over 52
Imperial County, California has been a major agricultural, political, and commercial center in Southeastern California for over 100 years. Although the peripheral agricultural activities have been the focus and source of the region’s economy, the area’s role in agribusiness has also facilitated much urban growth. The farms in the Imperial Valley bring about $1,000,000,000 to the state’s economy each year. This rural and urban expansion has been enabled, exclusively, by the delivery of water from the Colorado River, via the All-American Canal, to the otherwise desiccated rift zone by the Imperial Irrigation District (IID). To date, the Imperial Valley has no source …show more content…
The channel started in the U.S., and traced the international border in Mexico before entering the Imperial Valley. For several years, the diversion induced the settlement of two-thousand new settlers and the cultivation of a hundred-thousand acres of irrigated farmland, mostly owned by a few, wealthy landowners. Then, between 1905 and 1907, a series of heavy floods along the Gila River breached the canal and altered the Colorado River flow, sending the entire volume spilling through channels running northwest into the Salton Trough- pooling into what we know today as the Salton Sea. The valley’s agricultural advancements were lost to the deluge, but by early 1907, the flooding subsided. The Southern Pacific Railroad, who had their own particular interests to protect in the region, reset the Colorado River’s natural course through great effort and physical intervention. They sold properties acquired from the CDC’s bankruptcy to the newly formed Imperial Irrigation District (IID) in …show more content…
Department of Commerce met with the seven Colorado watershed states to delineate and allot river waters officially among them. General allotments were allocated among the upper basin, lower basin, and Mexico (7.5maf to the upper basin, 8.5maf to the lower basin, 1.5maf to Mexico), and the “Colorado Compact” was signed by the state delegates in 1922. However, it was not until Congress and the Bureau of Reclamation intervened in 1928 that the new Boulder Dam (later Hoover Dam) and All-American Canal came to fruition. The ensuing California Limitation Act, stating that California would be limited to 4.4maf of the lower basin’s allotment of the Colorado River, and Boulder Canyon Project Act, which would create the largest storage and release facility to date, gave the Imperial Valley the right, the will, and the power to fully transform the area into an agricultural oasis. The Hoover Dam was completed in 1936, and the All-American Canal was flowing from the Imperial Dam by 1942. Imperial Irrigation District constituents paid the full expense of the large-scale project back to the federal government over 52