Gila River Spills Over Dam, Threatening Homes and Crops

Water poured uncontrolled over a dam spillway, feeding a flood that is expected to swamp the homes of 3,500 people and ruin $10 million worth of agricultural produce, officials said Wednesday.

The normally dry Gila River, fed by record winter rains that have caused millions of dollars in damage elsewhere in Arizona, was expected to spread across thousands of acres of sparsely populated desert farmland over the next several days.

People have been packing up their belongings all week and carting away mobile homes from small towns and scattered farms. Officials did not have an exact count, but most appeared to be heeding the advice to evacuate, said Lt. Lewis Wilbur of the Yuma County Sheriff’s Department.

“The majority of them are cooperating,” Wilbur said from an evacuation control center in Wellton. “Then, you’ve always got your 1% of die-hards that’s going to sit there until they wake up one morning with water around their ankles.”

County officials have urged but not ordered the evacuation of an estimated 3,500 people along most of the Gila for 90 miles from Painted Rock Dam near Gila Bend to the Colorado River above the city of Yuma in Arizona’s southwest corner.

Yuma County supplies a substantial amount of the nation’s winter lettuce. Flooding is expected to spoil $10 million worth of lettuce and other crops, state Agriculture Department spokeswoman Suzanne Sorich said. The county is the state’s main vegetable-growing area and makes Arizona the nation’s second-most prolific producer of lettuce, cauliflower and broccoli, behind California.

Painted Rock, an earthen dam built for flood control in 1960, was holding back an 80-square-mile shallow reservoir fed by record rains in January and February. The lower Gila is normally dry both above and below the dam.