The Story of SRP: Water, Power, and Community

Summary

This is, in the end, the story of those who call the Valley of the Sun home. From its earliest conception, SRP was created by—and for—the communities it serves. Over time, SRP’s water and power services have helped ensure the successful achievement of its original purpose: the economic development of the Valley and the region. When the Association was formed in 1903, the population of Maricopa County was barely twenty thousand. On his visit to the Valley just eight years later for the dedication of the massive storage dam that bore his name, President Theodore Roosevelt assessed what he saw as the bright prospects of a burgeoning community. To a crowd gathered on the steps of Old Main at Arizona State University, Roosevelt declared: “I believe as your irrigation projects are established, we will see 75 to 100 thousand people here. . . . You have the great material chance ahead.” In the 106 years since his speech, the water and power provided by SRP have helped the Valley harness Roosevelt’s “great material chance” to a degree even the president might not have imagined—today, the Phoenix metropolitan area boasts over four million residents, placing it among the largest in the United States. Just as it has throughout its first century, SRP continues to build upon the achievements of the past in pursuit of a better future.

In 1917 the federal government transferred operation of the first project completed under the National Reclamation Act, the Salt River Project (SRP), to a group of local water users in Arizona, the Salt River Valley Water Users’ Association (Association). The transfer marked an important milestone in the early days of the nation’s efforts to develop water infrastructure in the West. It also carried with it an understanding that would become a hallmark of future projects: that the success of reclamation projects required not only federal investment, but also a strong base of local support. As the first project operated by a local entity, SRP became the model of what reclamation could accomplish in developing Western lands. The fact that SRP’s 1917 contract with the federal government is still in effect today testifies to the endurance of an approach that continues to be the foundation for managing water and power in the Valley.

The collective spirit that guided the Association’s early development was not a certainty at its formation. When the Association was formed in 1903 as a mechanism for residents to put forward their lands as collateral for the federal funds to construct Roosevelt Dam, the idea of a common organization to unify the competing interests of Valley water users was viewed with skepticism by many who saw it as an unwarranted intrusion into private endeavors. The experience of local water interests up to that time was marked by litigation and division more than cooperative and shared purpose. In light of this background, the Association’s formation and ultimate success in unifying disparate interests is even more significant. Valley residents ultimately realized the federal support to build the necessary water infrastructure for growth could only come through local collaboration and a pooling of interests that justified such a large investment. This book tells the story of the enduring partnership of those common interests, spanning federal, state, and local governments and a range of private interests, which through its continuity withstood the uncertainties of weather, economic cycles, and political movements and transformed a fledgling territorial corporation into a regional water and power provider. In the process, Arizona and SRP grew together into a state of several million residents and an organization that today supplies nearly 800,000 acre-feet of water annually and delivers power to more than a million customers.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Salt River Project Digital Library

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Contact(s): Daniel Garcia

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