High Lift Pumping Plant at Grand Canyon, Arizona

Abstract

A little more than a year ago the Santa Fe Railway constructed at Grand Canyon, Arizona, a pumping plant which has one of the highest lifts of any in this country. Water, which issues from springs in the sandstone on a plateau 1200 feet above the Colorado River, is collected in a concrete reservoir and from there is pumped up the sheer cliffs to the south rim of the greatest canyon in the world, a vertical lift of 3200 feet. For many years the railroad had hauled to Grand Canyon an average of 70,000 gallons of water per day from Flagstaff and other points a hundred miles or more away. To eliminate this very costly train haul it was decided, after fifteen years of study and discussion, to raise water from the Indian Garden springs which tourists locate by the patch of bright green in the desert brown of the canyon floor. The main pumping plant consists of four vertical centrifugal pumps of the turbine type, each of seventeen stages These are arranged in two pairs with the two pumps of each pair in series, so that the effect is that of two thirty-four stage pumps. Direct connected vertical motors of 60 HP. and 3600 R.P.M. speed drive each pump, and electricity is transmitted to the motors through an underground armored cable which parallels the pipe line down the canyon wall and which connects with the diesel engine generators in the rim power house. Each pump set can deliver 85 gallons per minute at a pressure of 1470 pounds per square inch, and uses nearly 120 H.P. Several unique features were involved in the construction of this pumping system. In order to get materials on the ground for the pipe line, reservoir and pumping equipment a complete set of four cableways located end to end, with spans varying from 600 to 2500 feet, had to be built and finally removed. A total of 1500 tons of materials was lowered over the cliffs by this means, while maximum single loads of five tons were