Area: Brooks

Brooks Aqueduct
http://culture.alberta.ca/museu

Website: www.culture.alberta.ca/museums/historicsiteslisting/brooksaqueduct/default.aspx
Email: darren.marty@gov.ab.ca
Phone: (403) 362-4451

Brooks Aqueduct

Description:
In the early 1900s the Canadian Pacific Railroad began construction of a major irrigation project, part of which is now known as the Eastern Irrigation District (EID). The Bassano Dam and the Brooks Aqueduct were two of the major engineering works required to get the system in operation. The Brooks Aqueduct was needed to carry irrigation water across a wide but shallow valley to supply the regions that are now know as Millicent, Patricia and Tilley. The CPR began construction of the aqueduct in 1912, completed it in the fall of 1914 and ran irrigation water through it in the spring of 1915. It was the longest concrete structure of its kind in the world and included the technical innovation of an inverted siphon which carried the water down under the CPR mainline track and up to grade again. The Aqueduct stretches over 3km at a maximum height of 18m. The construction required a labour force of over 300 workers in 38 construction crews. It consumed 19.000 cubic meters of steel-reinforced concrete. The Aqueduct had a capacity of 70 cubic meters per second, was built at a cost of $569,287.00 and was in operation from 1914 to 1979. The Brooks Aqueduct was declared a Provincial Historic Resource in 1980 and a National Historic Site in 1983.