A Problem of Soil in Transportation in the Colorado River

This paper is concerned principally with the problem of excluding soil, transported by the Colorado River, from the Canal System of Imperial Valley, in California. Its purpose is: (a) To feature the relative importance of the bed load of the Colorado River and to provide some conception of the extent of the unknown volumes of soil transported; (b) to present known and anticipated future river-flow conditions pertinent to soil conveyance; and (c) to propose fundamental requirements for a diversion structure that will exclude all the bed load and a part of the suspended load, thus permitting minimum sizes for-or, perhaps, eliminating as unnecessary-the enormous settling basins which are expected to desilt the large diverted flow, and also permitting lessened sluicing operations for the disposal of the sludge.