Feds allow SRP to hold more water for longer in Roosevelt Dam

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Water is a valuable resource in Arizona, and now Salt River Project, which provides water to more than 2 million households across Arizona, was given the green light from the feds to store and hold more water in Theodore Roosevelt Dam, which is about 80 miles northeast of Phoenix.

Right now, SRP has 20 days to put the stored water to use, or it is forced to release it down the normally dry Salt River.

SRP says this new change to hold water longer will benefit communities all across Arizona.

The five-year pilot program was approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

It will allow SRP to store water longer, going from just 20 days to 120 days.

This means SRP will be doing fewer water releases, which they say will save enough water for more than 300,000 households across Phoenix.

“This just highlights an avenue we can pursue to see how we can capture every drop of water we can and put it to good use,” SRP director of water strategy Kyle Tilghman said.

Tilghman says they store water in what’s called the flood control space at the Roosevelt Dam.

“The pilot project allows us now to retain that water in this space for 120 days to allow us to hit our peak summer season so we can schedule and put that water to beneficial use in lieu of putting the water down the salt river,” he said.

SRP is using last year as a prime example of being forced to release water when it would have been more beneficial to store it and use it as needed later.

“We had a good healthy reservoir system and a lot of runoff came in and the amount of water we could’ve captured and retained longer if this pilot project was in effect could equate to about 109,000 acre feet of additional water that could have been scheduled and delivered to our partners which equates to 330,000 households could have benefited from this water versus having it go down the Salt River,” he said.

Tilghman says this pilot program will benefit many central Arizona cities, including Chandler, Gilbert, Peoria and Avondale, as well as tribal entities, farms and more.

“That water will be allocated to them on how they want to use it and deliver it to their customers here in the Valley or central Arizona as a way of maybe offsetting using Colorado River water or groundwater and have a more secured water supply from a surface water component,” he said.

Over the five-year pilot program period, SRP will review how this process works and decide whether to keep these operations in place.

Tilghman says the last time Roosevelt Dam was modified in a way like this was the mid-1990s when they added more storage space.

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