Column By Mike Bibb
Photos By Mike Bibb: The left photo was taken at the San Jose-Sanchez Diversion Dam of the Gila River on Aug. 15, 2022, during a more productive rainy season. The picture on the right was taken of the Gila River – or lack thereof – at the Solomon Bridge on Sept. 5, 2024. Not enough rain from this year’s Monsoon to float a fishing bobber.
What a difference a couple of years makes.
In geological time, 24 months is a nano-second – hardly worth mentioning.
In Gila Valley time, it can mean the dissimilarity between a vibrant flowing river, and a bone-dry sandy scar stretching across several counties in southern Arizona.
The Gila River meanders 649 miles east-to-west from New Mexico, crossing the entire width of Arizona, and eventually reaching the Colorado River near Yuma. It drains a 60,000-square-mile watershed.
Adding to the quirkiness, the Upper Gila and its San Francisco tributary originate in Southwestern New Mexico. The San Francisco River empties into the Gila River a few miles south of Clifton, Arizona.
Meaning, when the Gila is dry as it passes through Greenlee and Graham Counties in Southeastern Arizona, chances are there has also been little rain in neighboring New Mexico.
However, that can change a few miles west. The East and West Forks of the Gila River, the San Carlos River, the San Pedro River, the Santa Cruz River, the Salt River – the Gila’s main tributary – and the Agua Fria River and Hassayampa River may at times be adding to the Gila’s flow further downstream.
For Gila Valley folks and farmers, what happens past Fort Thomas isn’t of much concern, as far as river flow is concerned. The San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation mainly benefits from the water storage behind Coolidge Dam, and whatever water rights it claims from the Gila as it passes through the reservation.
A lack of water in the river in the Safford area isn’t new. It happens fairly frequently. As does varying amounts of flow. Like most of southern Arizona, seasonal rains – and occasional flooding – aren’t the result of climate change, global warming, melting polar ice caps, gasoline-powered cars, or some other sinister plot to plague humanity.
It’s nature, and nature has been doing what it does for tens of thousands of years, long before man was walking upright. Yet super smart climatologists, university professors, and political opportunists are constantly predicting an earth-shattering calamity if we don’t soon shut down Texaco and coal-fired electrical generating stations.
Of course, it’s okay if they fly around in their Gulfstreams burning hundreds of gallons of aviation fuel and then hop into a limo to ferry them to a big climate meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.
Which, I understand, is somewhere on the other side of Lordsburg, New Mexico.
Oh well, I guess I’ll have to tolerate a wet, or dry Gila River until it either stops raining or begins.
Not necessarily in that order.
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
