(Courtesy of Salt River Project)

The large net in which the white amurs are placed and then lifted by crane into a truck, which will move them to another portion of the SRP canal system.

For the second year in a row, Salt River Project is draining portions of the Arizona, Grand and Crosscut canals for debris removal, maintenance and construction projects starting Monday. If you saw what they did last year, then you know barely a drop of water gets left behind. Which begs the question: what about the fish? Turns out, SRP is quite keen on saving as many fish as possible.

Before crews can empty the canals, they first have to scoop out thousands of white amur fish and relocate them to another portion of the canal that’s not being drained. SRP’s Jeff Lane said every year the company imports some 8,000, already-sterilized amur fish from Arkansas to help keep the canals free of aquatic vegetation. And for very good reason.

"They’re so valuable because we don’t have use the kind of chemicals we used to years ago before we utilized this fish," said Lane. "They eat three times as much as their weight of algae and vegetation in the canal, so just do a great job for us so we try to save every one of them as we can."

Lane said the dry up is part of a seven-year plan to keep the 131 miles of canals up and running. The project is expected to take a little more than a month.