Imperial Valley

California relies on Colorado River water to supply farmlands in the Imperial Valley and the Coachella Valley, as well as cities from Palm Springs to San Diego.

“I took on the New Orleans men,” Swing recalled, “putting to them again and again whether they could see any difference between the Mississippi’s flood threat to their people and the Colorado River flood threat to the people of the Imperial Valley.”

Rep. Phil Swing, who had been elected by Imperial Valley voters with the express goal of bringing the dam measure past the goal line, made sure that nobody overlooked the parallels between the 1927 flood and the disaster at home.

In 1905, a flawed canal cut on the banks of the Colorado River produced a massive flood that threatened to destroy the Imperial Valley, which already was producing crops worth $2 million a year.

Cotton growers objected to irrigating 1 million acres in the Imperial Valley, corn farmers objected to a million more acres of corn, and wheat growers to a million competing acres of wheat.