The Ganado Irrigation System Canal and Irrigation Features: A Description, History, and Finders’ Guide: Report

The Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) and Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources (NNDWR), in conjunction with other Federal and local entities prepared and evaluated alternatives for improving water management, conservation, and distribution within the Ganado Irrigation System. The resulting recommendations are termed the Ganado Irrigation Water Conservation Project (GIWCP), whose purpose is to develop a system that will enable the efficient conveyance of irrigation water to farmland and promote on-farm water conservation measures.
The proposed new conveyance system would replace the existing earthen canal with a combination of buried pipeline and concrete-lined canal. This would provide a cost-effective, highly efficient method of conveying irrigation water to agricultural fields within the Ganado irrigation System. Redevelopment of the system proposed under GIWCP would extend irrigation capability to 637 acres, all of which have previously been or are being farmed.
To mitigate the effects of canal re-construction, Reclamation agreed to a two-phase mitigation plan. This plan involved production of a summary history of the Ganado Irrigation System plus a guide to published and archived information about the canal (phase one), and a video chronicling the history of the canal system and its importance to the community of Ganado (phase 2). This report constitutes phase one of the canal mitigation.
This report presents the results of the overview. Photos linked to the project can be found at tDAR ID: 393865