SCOTTSDALE, AZ — An active monsoon means a busy winter clean-up for the Salt River Project.
Tuesday marked the last day of the season in SRP's effort to relocate all the white amur fish in Valley canals.
The fish known as a grass carp can eat three to four times their body in vegetation.
So instead of a weed-killing herbicide, SRP relies on fish shipped from Arkansas to help clean up the weeds that grow in canals.
"They can get anywhere from 36-48 inches big,” said Justin Schonhoff with SRP.
Crews put temporary, roughly 200 yards apart from one another.
The fish are pushed to one end with another wire fence where they're netted and put into a tanker truck.
Those fish are brought back upstream of the canal to start eating weeds again - ready for the next monsoon season.
We caught up with a crew near Hayden and Indian Bend in Scottsdale. The area was hit hard during monsoon season with the golf course flooding at one point.
Part of the canal cleanup calls for SRP crews to drain portions of the canal to clean debris left behind by the storms.
Typically they find things like bikes, shopping carts and tires but they've found appliances, cars, dead animals and even items that warrant a phone call to police.
"Every once in a while, we do find weapons, knives, guns, so yeah, we do have to get the police involved,” said Schonhoff.
Until early February, Crews will be repairing the canal lining from about Arizona Falls at 56th Street and Indian School Road in Phoenix to about 48th Street.
Repairs will also be done to the damage from Beeline Highway to the Indian Bend Siphon just west of Hayden Road.
SRP has a plan to do this canal cleanup over the next 10 years, covering about 8-12 miles each year, they hope to cover all of the canals which are about 130 miles.
“We have a responsibility to deliver reliable water to our customers, if we weren't able to get in there do this maintenance, clean out, we'd lose capacity of the canal and lose that ability to deliver that water,” said Schonhoff.
Front loaders and heavy equipment will be used to pull silt and dirt from the canal and move it to large dump trucks throughout the dry-up.
There will be signage posted on the Arizona Canal from 48th Street to the Beeline Highway where the canal banks will be closed to all traffic including bikes and pedestrians.
