By Tony Davis | Arizona Daily Star
In March 2014, the staged release of water into the Colorado River Delta was an international spectacle.
Thousands of onlookers joined dozens of elected and appointed officials, environmentalists and scientists at Morelos Dam at the Arizona-Sonora border south of Yuma to see the first significant flow of river water into the parched delta for more than 15 years.
Downstream in San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora, kids and their parents swam and splashed, ecstatic to see a live river again, enjoying the first burst of what was destined to be a “pulse flow” of 105,000 acre-feet into the delta.
Now, a second round of releases is headed to the delta that won’t be nearly as dramatic. But these flows will restore more riverfront with cottonwoods and willows than the last time and their impacts will likely last longer.
