Gila River Works To Regain Agricultural Tradition

Gila River works to regain agricultural tradition Associated Press Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Updated 10:05 a.m., Saturday, December 8, 2012 Concrete canals are forming across the reservation to supplement a network of earthen trenches used by ancestors of the Pima and Maricopa tribes for farming, but the infrastructure isn't expected to be complete until 2029. Rather than lose the water the community fought hard to obtain, it has turned to leasing some of it in the Phoenix area and selling long-term storage credits that it will use to help finance the extension and maintenance of its canal system. The Gila River Indian Community so far has stored enough water to create 450,000 acre-feet of credits that it can use itself or sell to municipal and industrial water providers or other users. About 14,000 people make their home on the Gila River Indian reservation south of Phoenix. Since the river was diverted to create the Coolidge Dam, tribal members have seen nothing but flood flows running through the normally dry river bed. The reservation still has about 35,000 acres of farms on which the tribal government, families and independent operators grow melons, pistachios, citrus, fruit and other crops. Elder tribal members recall when the Gila River flowed freely through the reservation and will get a semblance of that with planned riparian habitat and wetlands, but younger generations have no sense of what it's like to be farmers.

 

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