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When the Metropolitan Water
District was building its Colorado River Aqueduct, it bought
some land adjacent to the Hayfield pumping plant for a small
reservoir. In 1939, plant operators watched as water filled
the natural basin at the plant located between Palm Springs
and Desert Center, and then watched as it slowly disappeared
into the ground.
District investigations
in the 1940s showed that the bottom of the reservoir was
too porous to hold water, and the surface reservoir idea
was abandoned. Metropolitan's board took a second look in
1999 by launching a demonstration project to study if surplus
Colorado River water could be stored in the Hayfield aquifer.
The object of the study was to determine whether water could
be pumped out of the groundwater basin and put back in the
aqueduct for use in urban Southern California during years
of water shortages.
This is particularly important
because growth in Arizona and Nevada is forcing Southern
California to do without surplus Colorado River water in
the next 15 years and resort to a strategy of storing water
in wet years for use in dry years.
Preliminary investigations indicate
that Metropolitan could store up to 800,000 acre-feet* of
water in the basin.
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