Anyone who has ever removed buildup on surfaces around your home can appreciate the inventiveness of the Aqueduct Maintenance Team’s approach to cleaning tunnels and scraping the canals of the Colorado River Aqueduct.
John Helton
, an O&M tech IV based in Iron Mountain, says a 2009 re-configuring of the tunnel-cleaning machine boosted the CRA’s maximum capacity from 1,625 to 1,734 cubic feet per second (think of a cubic foot like a basketball-sized water drop floating by). That’s more than 215 acre-feet per day.
Watch a short video of the canal cleaning
here
.
In 2015, the three-person team expanded their attention to the open aqueduct, where buildup can narrow channels and require operators to dial back pumps so that water doesn’t spill out onto the dirt. This canal-scraping equipment consisted of two backhoes equipped with custom designed bucket scrapers.
“The results were amazing,” reducing water levels as much as 18 inches,
John
says.
For the last three CRA shutdowns, the new saw-tooth design has been like "switching from a butter knife to a steak knife," John says. It removes up to two inches of debris on a 15- to 20-mile section between the Eagle Mountain and Hinds pumping plants during the 2020 CRA shutdown. “You can’t go buy this equipment. You have to build it yourself,”
John
says.
Inspection Trip Manager
Bart Garcia
, who used to document the success of these operations while serving as a WSO engineer, says that “this year, they were able to scrape down to the bare concrete at places. The team has really improved the process.”