The Gila Valley needed flood control badly. Despite a major flood in 1891, when Andrew arrived in Arizona the Gila River was still a narrow stream with trees on its banks, but the Gila came to serve as a textbook example of erosion.354 A flood in 1905 proved greatly destructive.355 For example all but three acres of the Mechams’s forty-acre farm was washed away. Three thousand acres of farmland disappeared and twenty-two canals were broken.356 People north of the river were cut off for two weeks from the towns on the south, where all the valley’s businesses were located.357
The first bridge over the river was not built until 1915. Before that time the ford between Pima and Eden provided the main crossing. Even when the water was shallow, treacherous quicksand sometimes required calling for help to pull a fording wagon free.358
Another flood in 1906 caused a great amount of acreage to disappear. Andrew took Utah visitor Eliza Woodruff to see the flood, described as churning, boiling, carrying timbers and debris, washing away some outbuildings. More flooding occurred in 1916, destroying five thousand acres.
Andrew and others asked for federal assistance.359 An important study, “The Olmstead Report on Flood Control of the Gila River,” became available in 1919. It recommended construction of storage dams and many small check dams to retard runoff and thus reduce rampant erosion. Andrew worked closely with George H. Maxwell, head of the National Reclamation Association. They used the Church organization to urge every farmer in the valley to attend a series of meetings on the report360 and to support efforts to build a dam on the upper Gila. Their movement had to compete with a 1920 election to issue bonds for construction of a concrete highway through the length of the valley. Backers of the road touted that the highway would make the valley attractive to industry, with attendant economic growth. While Andrew generally favored investing in roads, he saw the dam as having higher priority. He said, “A dam will build the road, but the road won’t build a dam, and you will lose your precious water rights as well. Hundreds of people will be forced to leave the valley and go elsewhere to find employment.”361 The highway bond passed by a wide margin, 1,139 to 233.362 Even Andrew’s son Spencer voted for the highway.363
The Coolidge Dam finally was built on the river, but it was built downstream from the Gila Valley. Completed in 1928 the dam irrigated a hundred thousand acres of desert, half being Native American lands. With earlier action this water might have been available in the Gila Valley.364
Years later the Gila Valley Irrigation District spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight a water lawsuit wherein the Apaches of the San Carlos Reservation and the white people downstream in the Casa Grande Valley demanded an allocation of Gila River water on the ground that they had put the water to beneficial use for years while the people of the Gila Valley let the water run by. Final allocation gave the disputed water to the people lower on the river, foreclosing further water development in the Gila Valley. W. W. Pace asserted in later years that the Church members had made a mistake in not listening to Andrew regarding the Enterprise Canal and securing water rights.365
Throughout his life in Arizona, Andrew served as a spokesman for farming and irrigation interests. In 1900 and successive years he represented Arizona in the National Irrigation Congress. In March 1901 the National Irrigation Association named him an honorary member.366 In 1901, Governor Alexander Brodie appointed Andrew as the territorial delegate to the Trans-Mississippi Congress. In 1903, Brodie again appointed Andrew as the state’s representative, “even if [he] cannot go,” and thanked him for his report on irrigation in Arizona.367 Much of Andrew’s travel was at his own expense. In 1913 on a trip to the Peace Congress in St. Louis, he traveled five thousand miles by train. Over the years he also attended meetings of the American Pomological Society, the Railway Development Association, the American Mining Congress, the American Humane Association, the Home Beautifying League, and others.
