Imperial Valley press., 1909-08-14
ERRAT|C COLORADO CHANGES ITS ROUTE Bee River Not Cut Back, But New Channel Found
 in Sonora
No Lowering of Bed of the River at Intake of Imperial Valley Canal sys- tem-Protective Works on West Bank Unaffected by Unprecedented Flood.

The Colorado river has been doing some strange stunts this year and has kept the engineers guessing at what it's next freak may be. During the June flood season the discharge of the river was the greatest on record, reaching maximum of 145,000 cubic second feet or 7,25O, 900 miners inches, but the surface of the flood did not rise to the highest mark on the gauge at Yuma The river secured out it's bed to make room at the bottom for the food and at one time the bed was fifty feet below it's normal plane at Yuma.
 The concrete piers of the railroad bridge were left resting upon piles many feet above the bed of the riv- CT, but the piles are sixty feet long and we'll driven and no damage was done to the bridge. The men who built the piers of that bridge certainly made a good job of it.
 It was believed by all river men and by the engineers in charge of pro- tective and irrigation works that the Rio Abejos, one of the drainage chan nels in the overflowed land below the Mexican border, had cut back it's channel to junction with the Colorado. There is an abrupt fall of twenty-five feet from the Colorado to the Abejos, and recession of the channel of the latter to the big river would cause deepening of the Colorado from the junction up stream possibly clear to Laguna dam and also result in a change of the course of the river from the point of junction to the gulf
 But the Rio Abejos, or Bee River, has not cut back to the Colorado. En- gineers of the c. D. Go, have been down into the overflowed region to see what has happened, and they re- port that the cut is not within two miles of the channel of the Colorado, which is on ridge above the general level of the delta lands. Therefore the securing of the Colorado's bed is to be accounted for otherwise.
 Moreover the river bed has silted up again with subsistence of the flood. A month ago the bottom opposite the c. D. Co.'S. intake was twenty-five feet below the stills of the cement headgate; now it is foot higher. At the last observation the average depth of water in the channel opposite the gate was nine feet; the average depth in the intake was six feet and the depth at the gate was eleven feet. There is an incline of one foot in the surface of the water in he intake and as the deepest water in the channel was eleven feet, the bottom there is a foot higher than the bottom of the gate.
 This condition dispe.s any fear that water will not run from the river to the gate at the lowest stage. A lit tie dredging will make uniform depth in the intake and give a sharp grad tent from the channel to the gate. It will be necessary to clean out the canal from the gate towards Sharp's heading and dredgers are already on that job.
 The Colorado is not flowing into Volcano Lake by way of Bee river, and thence through the Hardy to the gulf, as has been supposed Bee riv- CT and other channels are only drain ing off the overflow. But the cratic river has found a new way to the gulf east of its old channel through