Arizona Farmers Worry About Gila River Flooding : Environment: An upstream reservoir is rapidly filling with winter runoff. The Army Corps of Engineers plans to boost releases from the dam, swelling the trickle into a torrent.

Farmers along the Gila River are looking nervously east these days.

About 80 miles upstream is Painted Rock Dam and a reservoir behind it that’s filling up with runoff from winter storms across Arizona. Soon the Army Corps of Engineers will boost releases from the dam, swelling the trickle that now makes up the lower Gila to the point it could threaten farms devastated by flooding in 1993.

Much farther east, in Washington, are federal officials they blame for delaying repairs to the levees that will be needed soon to protect their fields.

The Corps has refused to approve $5 million in emergency repairs, said Herb Guenther, administrative assistant at the Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation and Drainage District, which represents the farmers. Also held up in Washington is a request for $73 million worth of work to make permanent repairs.

*

“It’s unbelievable,” said Donald Wright, a Wellton farmer. “You’ve never run across something so stupid in your life. That river is going to flood again if they don’t fix it and now it’s only a matter of time.”

There has been little local controversy over the emergency repair plan. But the larger proposal is opposed by environmentalists and critics of government water projects, who say farmers should learn to live with the natural ebb and flow of the river.

“If they want to farm on the fertile soil of the flood plain, they should realize it’s a flood plain and that it’s going to get flooded,” said Frank Welsh, a former civil engineer with the Corps and a longtime critic of water projects in Arizona.

The irrigation district forms a green belt across the desert, straddling the Gila in the last stretch before it empties into the Colorado River near Arizona’s southeast corner.

*

The district draws water from the Colorado to nourish lettuce, alfalfa, cotton and other crops in soil that otherwise would sprout only cactus and brush.

But water is also an enemy if it rises above the level that can be contained in the Gila’s shallow channel.

That’s what happened in 1993, when heavy winter rains funneled into the lower reaches of the Gila, washing away fields and raising the underground water table to the point it brought plant-killing salts to the surface.

The emergency repairs the district sought would have rebuilt dikes at 18 places along a 13-mile stretch of the river most vulnerable to flooding.

That would have enabled the district to withstand flows of 5,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) down the river, the maximum expected this spring.

“It’s like buying a $5-million life insurance policy,” said Larry Killman, river operations superintendent for the district.

“It’s not a wasted effort. Doing it now means we won’t have to do it later.”

But the Los Angeles office of the Corps declined to forward the request to Washington, so the district will make its own repairs, Guenther said.

He estimated it would cost $500,000 to $700,000 to get the levees in shape to withstand flows of 2,500 cfs.

The Corps has agreed to hold releases to that level as it empties the flood-control reservoir, Guenther said.

The current flow is about 250 cfs. During the floods, the flow peaked at 26,000 cfs.

Without the emergency repairs, the flows from Painted Rock would jeopardize $13 million in repairs already done, largely at taxpayer expense, to the irrigation system, Guenther said.

Beyond the emergency repairs, the farmers are pressing for approval and funding to rebuild the flood-control system they had before the flood.

That consisted of a contoured channel averaging 250 feet wide designed to contain most flows, with levees averaging 800 feet apart to hold big floods.

The Corps must issue a permit for the work in consultation with other agencies.

That’s held up in part because the Environmental Protection Agency is calling for an environmental impact statement rather than the less stringent environmental assessment already completed, Guenther said.

The plan would create 12 acres of wetlands and manage vegetation along the normally dry riverbed to provide nesting areas for birds, Guenther said.

Environmentalist Robin Silver, who’s with the Audubon Society in Phoenix, said the river should be allowed to return to a more natural state.

“This isn’t a permanent solution,” said Silver. “It’s an expensive scam. I’d rather see a living river like it’s proven that it can be.”