What this short telling of the SP fixing the Colorado River levy doesn't mention is that the riverbank had already been breached at an old river channel to irrigate the Imperial Valley (otherwise known at the time as the Salton Sink) and a proper headgate had NOT been put in. The river was on the brink of changing it's course anyway (which it would do every few hundred years or so) as the silt had built up at the head of the Gulf of California. This is why the All American Canal was built soon after(the prior channels went south through Mexico before heading north back into the US). If you can find a copy of the book, The Water Seekers, it tells the story much better than I have (along with the building of the LA Aqueduct, the failure of the St. Francis Dam and the building of the Colorado Aqueduct).

David Maxwell
Tehachapi