Roosevelt Lake Full

Roosevelt Lake, the Salt River's largest reservoir, is at the flood limit and water releases are starting through the valley. Arizona is one of the few places that has rivers with no water. The Salt River, which supposedly runs through the valley, is almost always a dry, sandy, rocky and empty river bed. However, in years when there is sufficient run-off from mountain streams, the river runs through the valley. This event is generally called a "flood." When the river is running like any normal river, it is a flood. When it is dry, it is a river.

It is a major event every time the river runs, because in their infinite wisdom, the city, state and county governments build their roads in the "dry" river bed. So, every time the river "floods" the roads are under water and generally destroyed. The governments also build "bridges" which sometimes begin and end in the middle of the "flood." So the roads and bridges are closed to traffic. Before they built all the bridges, that used to mean that there were only one or two ways to cross the river, on the "real" bridges that had been built when the river was a real river. But now, unless there is a big flood, most of the bridges work and people can drive from Mesa to Phoenix without waiting for three or four hours to cross a bridge.

Now that we have the ground rules out of way, we read the story about Roosevelt being full, and drove to the lake, about a four hour drive if you return by way of the Apache Trail, a 15 mph dirt road. Anyway, the lake was full. Of course, the pictures are really bad and all they show is a lake with a lot of water, but that is the point, the lake doesn't usually have a lot of water. Maybe I could find a few early photos to show the change. If so, I will post them. I will also tell about the Apache Trail.

The bridge in the photos is across the lake at the dam. It is the longest single arch steel bridge in the United States.

Roosevelt Dam was rebuilt and raised in the past few years. If it had not been raised, the water in the lake would now be pouring over the spillway and running through the valley in a real flood, as opposed to the fake floods when the river is running normally for a river.

Here are some quotes from the news:

Roosevelt Lake, which had risen steadily since a series of storms in January and early February, crept closer to the flood-control limit as water gushed in from the Salt River and Tonto Creek. The three downstream reservoirs - Apache, Canyon and Saguaro lakes - were already full.

Shortly before 4 p.m. Friday, Roosevelt hit the legal top, an elevation of 2,151 feet above sea level. At that point, SRP switched its operations to comply with rules written by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that oversees flood-control regulations.

The utility increased the water flowing past Roosevelt Dam to 1,900 cubic feet per second, about 853,000 gallons per minute. During typical dam operations, the amount of water released from Roosevelt is much lower and fluctuates depending on the need for water in the Valley.

SRP will continue to release water at the required rate until water levels at the reservoir stabilize below the flood-control limit.

We were out walking and noticed the canals were full to the edge of the concrete, now we know why. They are running water into the canals rather than send it down the river.