Colorado Water Reaches Reservoir

Brief ceremonies Sunday at the Cajalco reservoir southwest of Riverside marked the first inflow of Colorado River water into the Los Angeles coastal plain and the actual start of the giant aqueduct system which it is predicted, will make abundant, cheap water ultimately available to many new areas.

At the rate of 270,000 gallons per minute the water began to store up behind massive earth fill dams, which will hold the Southland’s newest lake -- the headwaters of the aqueduct’s vein-like distribution system to Southern California consumers.

Officials of the Metropolitan Water District, engineers and workers who aided in building the project and thousands of onlookers witnessed the brief, effective ceremonies at the reservoir which marked another milestone in the aqueduct construction.

Principal speakers were W. P. Whitsett, chairman of the M.W.D. board of directors; Victor H. Rossetti, chairman of the board’s public relations committee; Assistant Chief Engineer Julian Hinds and Chief Electric Engineer J.M. Gaylord, both of the district’s engineering staff.

Complete In Year

Within a year, the speakers said, the 150-mile distribution network, which will carry the water from Cajalco Dam to the 13 Southland cities in the water district, will be completed.

One of the principal units of this system in a modern plant which is to provide soft and filtered water of a quality superior to that now used in Southern California, they said.

Engineers declared the Cajalco project would have a capacity of 100,000 acre feet of water, or about 33 billion gallons. It is constructed in a natural basin near Riverside, and is formed of an earth fill dam 195 Ieet high and a third of a mile thick at its base, and by an earth fill dike, 90 feet high and one and one-half miles long. Both are paved with reinforced concrete on the reservoir sides.

Cities which will receive water by virtue of their membership in the Metropolitan Water District are Los Angeles, Anahaim, Beverly Hills, Burbank, Compton, Fullerton, Glendale, Long Beach, Pasadena, San Marino, Santa Ana, Santa Monica and Torrance.