A short blurb the other day—I can’t link to it because it doesn’t appear to have been posted on the AZCentral web site—said “a portion” of the Arizona Canal at the Scottsdale Waterfront will be drained for maintenance.

The story never explains what that means. You can drain a lake, sure. But how do you drain a “portion” of a canal? If you block water from going into it you’re draining the whole canal. I don’t think you can just dam it up at some point, because the continuing flow would presumably cause flooding, right?

If by portion the paper means the SRP somehow walls off say half of the width of the thing to allow inspection while the water continues to flow on the other side, why doesn’t it just say so? Why didn’t an editor ask for clarification of a basic question?