CALIFORNIA: River in the Desert

The swift waters of the Colorado River last week turned from their bed. Flashing in the sun, they poured westward across the desert, through the mountains, came at last into the thirsty streets of Pasadena, 225 miles away. The Colorado had not changed its course. The cool stream flowing over the desert and through the mountains was a man-made river, a giant aqueduct created to carry water to the semi-arid cities of Southern California’s coastal plain.

One of the biggest engineering projects in the U.S., the new aqueduct system has been under construction for eight years, cost $186,000,000. It has been taking shape ever since a few farseeing citizens of Los Angeles discovered 18 years ago that their supply of ground water was shrinking, that Southern California’s average 15 inches of rainfall a year was not enough to support its fast-growing population.

Day after Calvin Coolidge signed the bill authorizing Boulder Dam in 1928, eleven coastal cities (later 13) set up the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. They voted a $220,000,000 bond issue, and in 1932 got RFC to help them sell the bonds. With a PWA loan, they started work on the aqueduct, which runs from Parker Dam, 155 miles south of Boulder Dam, to Lake Mathews, near Riverside. With the world’s deepest dam foundation (233 feet under the river bed), Parker Dam stores water for the whole District system.

The main aqueduct winds, climbs and burrows 242 miles across the State. Along the way, the water runs through 29 tunnels totaling 92 miles in length, five reservoirs, 62 miles of concrete-lined canals, 55 miles of covered conduits, 29 miles of siphons, five big pumping plants which lift the water a total of 1,617 feet over hills and out of valleys.

The main system was completed in 1939. Finished last week were 150 more miles of distributing lines which pipe the water from the filter plant (capacity: 1,000,000 gallons a day) near Riverside to the reservoirs of Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Long Beach, Santa Ana, nine other cities. As the sweet waters of the far-off Colorado slowly welled up last week into a subterranean chamber supplying Sunset Reservoir, Pasadena became the first community in the system to get the District’s water.

On hand for the momentous event were two District representatives, four Pasadena officials. Said one, with relief: “Well, here she is.”