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The Salt River is unimpressive, on its face, when it enters Theodore Roosevelt Reservoir behind the T.R. dam, outside of Phoenix. Nonetheless, it is a vitally important flow. The Salt River Project is one of the earliest efforts to impound and control water in the western United States, and its succes and failures have marked water policy throughout the West. In part the problem involves the very construction of the dam. The T.R. Dam, impressive and trend-setting when it was built, is now a striking example of a reservoir that has suffered greatly from silation that is so pronounced that holding capacity and the very efficacy of the dam is in question. And beyond that, this damming of water has led to enormous evaporation, and in some real sense, encouraged the development of Phoenix and the Valley of the Sun.
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