Heavy snowmelt runoff in Verde, Salt rivers causes road closures, flooding in Phoenix area
Corrections & Clarifications: The story has been updated to reflect the correct number of years that Arizona has been in a long-term drought condition.
The snowmelt runoff that has resulted in water releases into the Verde and Salt rivers has caused some road closures and flooding in the Phoenix area, but it is great news for Arizona’s water supply, according to Salt River Project officials.
The winter storms in late February that brought large amounts of snowfall in Northern Arizona has caused the Verde River water storage system to nearly fill to capacity. The system is composed of the reservoirs at Bartlett and Horseshoe lakes, which were both at 97 percent capacity Tuesday, according to SRP’s daily water report.
SRP began releasing water from the Verde River into the Salt River at the Granite Reef Diversion Dam on Feb. 28 to make room in the watershed for additional snow melt. By Thursday night, the dam will be releasing water into the Salt River at a rate of 700 cubic feet per second, SRP officials said.
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The release has allowed water to run though the usually dry Salt River bed, and the flow has closed some roads and created traffic delays for Valley residents. The flow has closed McKellips Road between Alma School Road and Loop 202 north of Mesa, and a portion of Gilbert Road between State Route 87 and Thomas Road.
The water has reached as far west as 67th Avenue, which is closed between Southern Avenue and Broadway Road, according to the Arizona Department of Transportation’s traffic-delay map.
The Salt River's natural flow takes it west through the Valley where it empties into the Gila River near Baseline Road and Avondale Boulevard.
SRP officials do not expect that the flooding will have a major impact on the Valley.
However, another storm system was moving into northern Arizona and could bring more snow this weekend, but nothing like the record-breaking amounts seen on Feb. 21.
Charlie Ester, SRP’s manager of Surface Water Resources, thinks that this weekend’s storm should not have any significant impact, and other projections for next week’s storm are showing that it also may not have any significant impact.
The runoff is expected to have a healthy impact on the Verde and Salt river reservoirs that store water in the SRP management system. The Salt River reservoirs include Roosevelt, Apache, Canyon and Saguaro lakes.
Ester went on to say he did not believe the water runoff would even reach the Painted Rock Dam on the Gila River near Gila Bend, which created a roughly 2.5-million-acre reservoir normally empty. It can hold more water than all six reservoirs in the Salt and Verde systems combined.
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The last time water runoff made it to Painted Rock was in 2005, according to Ester.
“The fact that we are having a wet winter is cause for celebration because it is refilling our water supply after so many years of drought,” Ester said.
Arizona is in its 25th year of a long-term drought, according to Dr. Nancy Selover, state climatologist at the Arizona State Climate Office. Of those 25 years, the watersheds in Arizona have experienced wetter than normal conditions six times.
2018 was the driest runoff season in Arizona in the past 120 years, with only a total of 100,000 acre-feet of runoff. That is less than the amount of runoff the Salt and Verde reservoirs had from the Feb. 14-15 storm, according to a statement from the SRP.
