... the All-American Canal, which since 1944 has transported water from the Colorado River westward into California's Imperial Valley, helping turn a desolate and arid wasteland into a $1-billion-a-year farm economy.2% loss isn't much, but when you see SD, LA, and the Imperial Valley planting acres of non-native flora that are water intensive for cultivation, the loss of millions of acre/feet per year makes a bad situation worse.The canal's operator, the Imperial Irrigation District, says it will soon begin a project to reline a porous 23-mile section of the canal, converting it from clay to concrete. That would save the vast amounts of water lost to seepage ...
The stakes are high. Seepage totaling as much as 2% of all the water transported from the Colorado River to the Imperial Valley has brought prosperity to the northeast Mexicali Valley, which is what the Imperial Valley is called south of the border. Losing it would create economic, social and environmental problems, Baja officials warn.
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"We are concerned with any possibility of significant reduction of what we receive from the Colorado River," Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda said Friday. "That's where we get our water from."
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California officials say that the lining project violates neither the letter nor spirit of the binational water agreement and that asking Southern California not to line the canal so that the water can continue to seep out and aid the Mexicali Valley is asking too much.
For one thing, the irrigation district has paid for the water that Mexican farmers are using, state officials said, according to a formula under the 1944 treaty. The agreement calls for Mexico to receive 1.5 million acre-feet of water, roughly one-third of what California gets.
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U.S. officials note that along with receiving its full allocation under the 1944 treaty, Mexico also receives about 200,000 acre-feet a year because of problems with a storage facility in Imperial County--water that, like the canal seepage, they say belongs to the U.S.
If you eat lettuce, cauliflour, broccoli, cabbage, asparagas, and a variety of other fruits, and vegtables in the winter, it was grown in these water intensive areas, irrigated with Colorado River Water. Don't complain unless you are prepared to give them for half the year.