In an attempt to learn as much about the whole canal system in the valley, I started cold-emailing and using basic networking tactics to connect with and talk to as many people as possible. I figured the more people that I talked to, the more rounded the information would be, and if one person could connect me to the next person, and that person to the next, then somewhere along the chain of contacts and connections, I would find the gems, the gold that I was searching for.
One of my normal means of networking anymore is to talk to ASU Art Museum curator John Spiak. There are some people in this world who are contact people, connectors. Within social scientists, they are the people who cross from one social circle into many other social circles, thus allowing for the Six Degrees of Separation theories to happen. I know a few of them, and they seem to know everyone in town. Nora Spitznogle, a woman who I worked with in Indianapolis, is one of them. If you know anyone in Indy, they know Nora. John Spiak is another one of these people.
I asked him about any connections with SRP (which is the Salt River Project, or the people who operate the canals as well as create power at the Roosevelt and other dams upstream). Of course, the ASU Art Museum had worked with SRP within the last few years, and John knew a community liaison contact at SRP. After checking to make sure that it was alright for John to connect us, I received the name and email of Jim Duncan.
After getting his information, I emailed Jim and set up an appointment with him at the SRP center in North Tempe, off of Project Road near Mill Avenue. There are a few different SRP centers, and this one houses the offices that include the public relations sectors, the Archives, and the ways in which SRP is perceived within the community. It seems like an interesting entity to deal with, one with many different facets within the valley, and one with many roles. They run the canals, but they are also the place where I send my electric bill.
The complex on Project Road was pretty impressive, and I got lost a little bit just trying to find the right parking and entrance to the building. The place is pretty secure, and after I told the front desk security who I was meeting, they paged Jim to come down and talk to me. There is a giant, two foot diameter paper ball on the security desk that looked like name tags of some sort. While waiting for Jim I looked around at the lobby/information area. There were many maps and old black and white photographs of the canals, an interactive lighted map showing where the SRP canals are in comparison to the Native American Hohokam canals which were abandoned about three hundred years before the settlers found them and re-dug parts of the system.
Overall, the office complex was pretty secured, considering it was a public, government owned utility company. Everything was behind swipe keyed doors, and SRP personnel were always accompanying people through the building. No one walked alone.
Jim came down and met me in the lobby and we talked at an open table on the unlocked side of the swipe doors. I explained my project to him, the ideas of using the geocaching system to get people out into the canal environment. I talked about geocaching in general, showing him images from my phone of some geocaches, and basically tried to make him comfortable about my project and the hidden aspect along the canal. His main concern was with having anything dug around the canals, since the canal system itself is technically federal land and property. If there was any digging or hiding, I would have to get permission from the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Reclamation. No digging for me, as long as there are no stipulations for magnets, we’re a-ok!
All in all, we had a pretty good conversation. He seemed interested in the project and basically asked what he could do for me. I asked for contacts, specifically people who had access to photographs, histories, oral projects, and other information that would help me to grasp a greater understanding of the history of the valley and the SRP connection to that. He mentioned Shelly Dudley at the SRP Archives department. I also told him that I would love to get out to the canal spots and witness as much as possible about how the canals work, where the water comes from, how it flows, and where are the places that the water washes through. And also I’d love to talk to people who have worked with or used the system over a period of time, people who would be able to give their personal perspectives on how the water has effected their existence here in the valley. He told me that he would contact Greg Watkins and others who were long time water masters, and set me up with appointments with zanjeros, or the watermasters who specifically turn on and off the water in the valley. The people with the hands on the water itself.
He mentioned the upcoming 100 year anniversary of the Roosevelt Dam, and the event that SRP had planned for that momentous occasion. There would be dignitaries, the governor, and other SRP big-wigs at the actual dam site, as well as a live feed of the ceremony which would be shown at the SRP headquarters buildings (including the one we were in). I couldn’t keep my excitement back about wishing to witness the event, and asked for permission to watch it with other SRP employees. I didn’t even have to twist his arm very much to get an affirmative.
So on the way out, Jim gave me some literature, including a zanjero area map. While he was in the swipe key access part of the building I wandered into the small SRP museum, which housed many old photographs of the canal as well as large text pieces that illuminated speeches by popular and important people in relation to the history of the canals.
One panel told a bit of history that was extremely important to my understanding of the valley. So when the Bureau of Land Reclamation (a new part of the Federal Government) was looking into projects in the west, they were propositioned by a group of farmers in the Arizona valley who were wishing to have a consistent amount of irrigation water for their crops. Coming off of a year of drought which followed two years of floods, the valley residents just wanted consistent water to flow through the canals that fed their crops. They proposed building a damn in the Superstition Mountains east of the valley, to create a reservoir to store water for the lean years, as well as control the water that would flow through the valley. Power would also be generated through the damn to be sold to the city below.
The Federal Government agreed to the plan to build this damn and reservoir, but didn’t want to pay for the project all alone, so the farmers in the valley, everyone who was a part of the Salt River Valley Water Users Association, put their land up as collateral for the building of the damn. In essence, the valley users pooled their land together to offer to the government so that a damn would be built to water their farmland. It is an amazing case of communal cooperation bordering on socialism, with a hint of downright progressivism. And in Arizona! Really warms my heart that everyone banded together like that to build something that was for the collective good.
And in the end, when the government finished the damn, they gave the control rights to the water that flowed downstream because of it to the SRVWUA, which changed its name to the SRP. Kinda interesting place, this SRP. It’s kinda like a business, but the Federal Government owns all the land and lets SRP manage it for non-profit. It’s an interesting egg to crack. I mentioned the story as I was leaving to Jim and he was just as amazed as I was at the amount of togetherness the local farmers had in pooling their only resource, their land, against the future of their harvests. In the 1960’s, SRP paid off the government in full by the assessments that SRP charged to the farmers for the water as well as the profits that were garnered by the newfound need for power that was generated at the damn. It seems like there are going to be a lot of layers to this onion, and I’m leaving the complex with a list of contacts to come and leads to follow.
