John Wesley Powell, the Civil War veteran who lost most of his right arm at the Battle of Shiloh, led his first expedition down the Green and Colorado Rivers, including the Grand Canyon in 1869. This provided the first exploration of the Colorado River basin by Americans of European descent and it began the process of understanding the nature of western territories of the United States, including Arizona (Figure 1).
The degree of aridity of this region was very strongly impressed upon Powell and he spent much of his life working to educate law and policy makers of the conditions prevalent in the western U.S. He worked diligently with lawmakers, government experts, and citizens to communicate the fact that the development of the western territories, which the nation was rapidly embarking on after the Civil War, would be limited due to the lack of water. His comments to the Montana Constitutional Convention in 1889 “All the great values of this territory have ultimately to be measured to you in acre feet” is a good example of his basic message and it has proven to be quite prophetic in our experiences of living and working in the desert Southwest in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Powell became the second director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) from 1881 to 1894. In this and similar capacities, he constantly advocated for policies for the development of the arid West that were consistent with the prevailing arid conditions. As the lands in the western U.S. were being developed, the need for land “reclamation” was recognized. It was 120 years ago this week, on 17 June 1902 that Theodore Roosevelt signed the Reclamation Act and the U.S. Reclamation Service (USRS) was formed within the USGS under the Secretary of the Interior Ethan Allen Hitchcock. The new USRS was given the responsibility of studying potential water development projects in each western state with federal lands. Revenue from the sale of federal lands was the initial source of the USRS funding.
Thus began the process of the USRS in the development of about 30 western water projects between 1902 to 1907. In 1907, the Secretary of the Interior separated the USRS from the USGS and created the Bureau of Reclamation (BoR) as a distinct entity within the Department of the Interior. The Boulder Canyon (Hoover Dam) project was authorized in Congress in 1928 and funded by general funds appropriated by Congress to the BoR, and from that the development of Lake Mead began. Lake Mead is the main storage reservoir for the lower basin of the Colorado River.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, efforts in the western U.S. to develop lands for agriculture encountered problems with lands and soils that were found to be unsuitable for irrigation, often due to salinity, sodicity, and drainage problems. The “reclamation” of these lands became an important part of the BoR objectives and operations. All this development was dependent on the availability of water and good land and water management capacities.
During the 20th century, the BoR was responsible for some tremendously large and ambitious projects, including Boulder Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, Glen Canyon Dam, and many others. Today, the BoR operates in 17 western states with water and electrical power projects with more than 600 dams, reservoirs, powerplants, and canals. The BoR is the largest wholesaler of water in the U.S. and supports irrigation water storage and conveyance throughout the west on farmlands that produce more than 60% of the nation’s vegetables and 25% of the fruit and nut production in the country. The BoR is the second largest producer of hydroelectric power in the U.S. with 53 powerplants. The western U.S. development and population is heavily dependent on the BoR water and power works.
In Arizona and the desert Southwest, the lands and people here today have a very close relationship to the BoR for water and electrical power. All the lands along the mainstem of the Colorado River and the Central Arizona Project (CAP) are intimately connected to the BoR. Our efforts to deal with the water shortages on the entire Colorado River system are some of the greatest challenges this region and the BoR have faced since the early days of development in the 19th century.
Thus, there are many participants in the process of dealing with the current water shortage on the Colorado River system, including the U.S. Department of the Interior, the BoR, and all the basin states. An accentuating feature of the current water shortage on the Colorado River is due to the fact that for the past 22 years, the average annual flow in the Colorado River has been ~ 12.4 million acre-feet (maf) while the Colorado River water is budgeted for a total of 16.5 maf of allocations between U.S. states and Mexico.
Essentially, all of us living in the desert Southwest are in this together; including agricultural, urban, and tribal entities. All parties involved must work together to resolve this disparity between the water that the river is providing and the greater amount that is desired and allocated. The issues and general situation that we are facing has an urgency that requires immediate attention. I remain hopeful that we can meet the challenges of our time as our predecessors did in the past.
This study was conducted at the Yuma Valley Agricultural Center. The soil was a silty clay loam (7-56-37 sand-silt-clay, pH 7.2, O.M. 0.7%). Spinach ‘Meerkat’ was seeded, then sprinkler-irrigated to germinate seed Jan 13, 2025 on beds with 84 in. between bed centers and containing 30 lines of seed per bed. All irrigation water was supplied by sprinkler irrigation. Treatments were replicated four times in a randomized complete block design. Replicate plots consisted of 15 ft lengths of bed separated by 3 ft lengths of nontreated bed. Treatments were applied with a CO2 backpack sprayer that delivered 50 gal/acre at 40 psi to flat-fan nozzles.
Downy mildew (caused by Peronospora farinosa f. sp. spinaciae)was first observed in plots on Mar 5 and final reading was taken on March 6 and March 7, 2025. Spray date for each treatments are listed in excel file with the results.
Disease severity was recorded by determining the percentage of infected leaves present within three 1-ft2areas within each of the four replicate plots per treatment. The number of spinach leaves in a 1-ft2area of bed was approximately 144. The percentage were then changed to 1-10scale, with 1 being 10% infection and 10 being 100% infection.
The data (found in the accompanying Excel file) illustrate the degree of disease reduction obtained by applications of the various tested fungicides. Products that provided most effective control against the disease include Orondis ultra, Zampro, Stargus, Cevya, Eject .Please see table for other treatments with significant disease suppression/control. No phytotoxicity was observed in any of the treatments in this trial.
Some of the oldest and most effective broadleaf herbicides are the growth regulators. These include 2,4-D (Several names 2,4-DB (Butyrac, Butoxone), MCPA (Rhomene Rhonox, Chiptox, Battleship & others), Dicamba (Clarity, Banvel), Clorpyrolid ( Stinger), Triclopyr (Garlon, others), and many products containing 2 or more of these.Their principle use in this region are on grain, bermudagrass, alfalfa,cole crops and sugarbeets. Their utility is very limited in this region, however, because of their volatility and potential to move and cause injury to sensitive crops. Volatility is very different than spray drift. Spray drift is the airborne movement of the herbicide to non-target sites. It is often related to physical conditions like wind speed, nozzle type and pressure, application technique and other factors. Volatility, on the other hand, involves movement after the herbicide has evaporated into the air as a gas. It is affected not only by physical conditions but more importantly by characteristics of the herbicide including chemical properties of the active ingredient, especially vapor pressure, and formulation type. All of the growth regulators have high vapor pressure and are volatile. These herbicides can be formulated differently and formulation can significantly affect volatility. The amine formulations are much less volatile than the ester formulations of all of these products. The amount of product used can vary with formulation and there is generally more volatilization potential with higher use rates. The type of salt used with the amine formulations are also influential. Formulations of dicamba that use sodium salt ( Distinct, Celebrity Plus and Northstar) or diglycolamine salt (Clarity) are less volatile, for instance, than formulations using the DMA salt used in Banvel. The volatility of all of these growth regulators is always higher during the hot summer temperatures. Their use is restricted in some counties in California between March 15 and October 15. Questions come up every year at this time about how long after application these products can volatilize and how far they will move. You can find information that claims everything from that they are safe after drying to that they can volatilize 60 days after application. Many of us have seen them not move at all at times and move a mile or 2 at others. This is likely because volatility is affected by so many factors. It will always be difficult to predict. A sample list of the vapor pressures (mm/Hg) of herbicides that are used here follows. Vapor pressures very significantly by formulation and measurement technique and are affected by many factors. This list can give you a general idea of how potentially volatile an herbicide can be. The higher the vapor pressure the more potentially volatile it is. How volatile it becomes will depend upon temperature, humidity, wind, rate, adjuvants used and other factors.
|
HerbicideVapor pressure(mm of Hg) |
|
Prowl1.2 x 10-5 |
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Treflan1.5 x 10-2 |
|
Glyphosate1.8 x 10-7 |
|
Goal2.0 x 10-7 |
|
Clethodim2.6 x 10 -9 |
|
Dicamba3.4 x 10 -5 |
|
2,4-D ester3.9 x 10-7 |
|
Eptam4.5 |
