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Nevada population boom made flood worse

SCOTT SONNER AND MARTIN GRIFFITH, ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITERS
Posted: 1/11/2008
SPECIAL REPORT | The Jan. 5, 2008 canal breach and its aftermath

FERNLEY, Nev. (AP) — In 1903, when a 31-mile canal was dug to move water from the Truckee River to the melon and alfalfa fields around Fallon, earthern embankments made a lot of sense.

The dirt canal construction was cheaper than lining the entire route with concrete, and no one in northern Nevada much minded if it and other canals like it in the Newlands Reclamation Project occasionally failed. Floodwaters would flow into pastures and surrounding desert and soak back into the water table.

Today, what once was the rural agricultural town of Fernley is now a growing bedroom community of about 20,000 residents that has been declared a disaster area after storm-swollen water tore a hole in the 50-foot-wide and 9-foot-deep canal and inundated hundreds of homes.

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