The River in the Sky- The River Runs Slowly/Aquatic Plants -- Brooks Aqueduct NHS, Brooks AB CAN - Alberta Heritage Markers on Waymarking.com

There are three blue panel historical markers at this overlook where you can see the Brooks Aqueduct and the modern canal that replaced it. There is a small pullout just before the bridge over the modern canal.

This historical marker reads as follows:

RIVER IN THE SKY

THE RIVER RUNS . . . SLOWLY

Water flowed through the Brooks Aqueduct every year from 1915 until it was replaced in 1979. The engineers who built the Aqueduct planned a delivery rate of about 900 cubic feet (25 cu. m) of water per second. The Aqueduct never managed it. From the intake on its west end to the outlet on the east side, the change in elevation was only 5.5 feet (1.6 m), gradient of a just 0.01 percent. This meant the water did not flow very quickly on its own.

The rough interior surface didn’t help either. It caused friction, slowing the water down. And when the aqueduct is running full, water slapped against the cross struts creating even more friction. Even when the Eastern Irrigation District replaced some of the beams with steel ones mounted across the top of the bowl rather than inside it, in the 1940s, the Aqueduct's flow never reached the projected rate. At its highest, it reached just 2/3 of it.

That wasn’t all. No one had counted on the weeds or silt, or the fish swimming through the system. As one man recalled, “each fall when they drained the irrigation canal, there was always quite a crowd that would gather at the aqueduck [sic] the place where it went under the railroad . . . This would trap all the fish that were in the canal.” When the staff opened the steel drainage doors the people waiting filled up sack after sack with fish. The River in the Sky really was acting like a river.

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AQUATIC PLANTS . . . JUST A FANCY NAME FOR WEEDS
1923 “… Chain dragging for weeds over 4 ½ miles of canal requiring 225 miles of canal chain dragged at a cost of $1019.25 . . . using a heavy chain 15 pounds per foot . . . Later used a wider drag chain to finish as the way from the heavy chain through the weeds upstream so that the chain passed over instead of pulling them up.”

1933 “Ninety eight and one quarter canal miles and 334 ½ chain miles were dragged this year. This is an increase of sixty percent in chain miles over the last year . . . The increase is due to the very hot weather in June and July, and to the fact that canals cleaned out by the dragline a few years ago are again showing weed growth.”

[photo]

Canals in the irrigation system had to be regularly cleared of weeds. The low water flow and summer sun warming the water encouraged plant growth. CPR employees drove teams of horses linked by a chain on opposite sides of canals. The chain caught the weeds and pulled them up. At various points in the irrigation system crews hauled the floating weeds out of the water."

Type of Marker: Cultural Sign Age: Historic Site or Building Marker Parking: very easy Placement agency: Eastern Irrigation District and partners

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Date Logged Log User Rating   07/24/2019 Benchmark Blasterz visited it