Insider Blog: How much water flowed through our washes?
As we all continue our cleanup of the Coachella Valley in the wake of Tropical Storm Hilary, I wanted to take a deeper look at exactly how much water flowed through the valley. I looked into how much water our washes saw from Hilary and how much water they can handle.
The washes here in the Coachella Valley serve as our first line of defense for flood waters. There are 16 storm water protection channels stretching over 135 miles. The backbone of the whole system is a 50 mile channel stretching from Whitewater to the Salton Sea. This channel has a capacity of 39 thousand cubic feet per second! The wash in Indio recorded a peak flow rate of 24,500 cubic feet per second. That equates to over 183,000 gallons per second!
At this rate, you could fill an Olympic sized swimming pool in around 4 seconds! The Coachella Valley Water District is funded largely by local property taxes. As a result, areas like Thousand Palms and the east valley, close to the Salton Sea, currently do not have the same level of protection.
