Archive for March 25, 2015

Water Flows Into Colorado River Delta in Historic First

Sunday March 23, 2014, at a little after 8 am, the gates at Morelos Dam on the Mexico-Arizona border were opened for the first time in history for the purpose of allowing the Colorado River to flow downstream into its delta to water the plants and animals that live there.  A crowd of more than 100, many from the local community, plus a handful of reporters and water workers from afar, waited just downstream.

A cheer went up when the water began to pour down, first in a trickle, and then a steady gushing flow.  It took a long time for the institutions that manage the Colorado River to make this happen.  Now we have the chance to see how long it takes the river to move downstream, and how far it goes. (See “Historic ‘Pulse Flow’ Brings Water to Parched Colorado River Delta.”)

water-through-the-damLater in the day, after some excellent adobada tacos, a few of us drove downriver to look for the front of the flow. We found it about 18 river miles below the dam, cool and clear. A lot of the flow is soaking into the parched, sandy channel, and downstream progress is slow but steady. The water was cool and clear. Read more