The River Runs Dry

The Brooks Aqueduct gradually wore out from the day it first began carrying water, and although leaky joints had largely been fixed and interior coatings were holding up fairly well, much of the concrete in the bowl had become rotten. The Eastern Irrigation District replaced just over half of that concrete, but concern remained that the structure might break or collapse under a full load of water. The aqueduct was replaced with an elevated two-bank earthfill canal and a reinforced concrete inverted siphon that could carry about 50 percent more water, and the new system began operating in 1979. Engineers had described the Brooks Aqueduct in 1925 as a peculiar structure with no exact parallel elsewhere, and during its lifetime it carried approximately 10 billion cubic metres of water. It was the largest steel reinforced concrete aqueduct in North America, and its inverted siphon under the railway tracks was an early application of reinforced concrete to a complex tubular form supported on a soft soil foundation. The water it carried year after year served farmers who needed it.

Alberta · Canada