 There's history here! And here. There's history there! History is everywhere! I must thank Ron and Maureen for having me. I don't know about annoying and all that, but it would be a bit of an overstatement. My grandfather moved to the Rogue Valley in 1910 to grow pears from Illinois. And so this now is the 107th year that we've been growing pears in the Rogue Valley and still learning. The Talon Irrigation District actually now irrigates 13,100 acres of land here in the Rogue Valley. And it all began really when the first minors headed for California wandered into Southern Oregon. And this kind of began a little migration here so that in 1850 a couple of fellows by the name of College and Pool discovered gold in Jacksonville. And of course that started a migration to Southern Oregon. It was soon recognized that fruit trees grew well here as well as other crops. We are fortunate to be able to grow quite a assortment of crops here in Rogue Valley because of our warm weather, fairly long summers. And one of the factors that has held growing crops back is the lack of irrigation. We have long hot dry summers, many times three months new irrigation, which is fine for growing fruit because rain on the fruit crop is not necessarily good. But to grow good crops, pasture, hay, grain, anything that grows needs irrigation when you have three months of dry weather. So the first settlers here established some orchards in the late 1850s. And it was interesting that in 1860 the Billings family came here in a covered wagon and they carried with them walnut and pear seedlings. Seeds, excuse me, there were no seedlings, couldn't carry nursery stock across the great plains in a covered wagon and get them here. So they had the seeds to start a few fruit trees probably not to grow commercially, but something for their own use as they were going to settle here. Then the start of the irrigation cycle here actually began in 1851. Jacob Wagner filed a water ride on Wagner Creek and irrigated property at the corner of Rap Road and Wagner Creek Road. And there is a monument there commemorating that. And then the next piece of the agricultural puzzle and the demand for irrigation came with the arrival of the Southern Pacific Railroad, which arrived here in 1884. Actually construction started that in Portland to tie a railroad to San Francisco in 1868. So it took them 16 years to get that thing from Portland to Medford. But what that did, it developed markets for the fruit that was growing here which was pretty limited by the local market. But at Paris in particular were impacted by the railroad huge degree because a pair do not grow well in the eastern United States because of the human climate. And there is a disease which we are a bacteria that we have in the Rogue Valley here called fire blight. And in their human climate they can't control it. And once the tree is infected which usually comes through the blooms that portion of the tree has to be removed. It moves in the sap and can go to the roots and kill the tree. So consequently most of the pairs of the United States are produced in the three western states where we have hot dry summers. Fruit production of course began, really grew as I mentioned when the railroad arrived and in 1891 fruit production grew dramatically here because of that. But without irrigation trees would not produce fruit uniformly every year. So on the dry years they had very little and on rainy years they had more than the market could absorb. So that variability made marketing difficult to manage. So the growers recognized that irrigation was needed and then at that time the United States Reclamation Service took interest in the Rogue Valley Basin at grower requests. This was in 1915. TID, the Town of Irrigation District, was formed with a board of directors in 1916. That first board was made up of R.E. Robinson, he was the chairman, O.A. Manning, and J.W. Miller. The first manager was Louis Brown and they had an attorney, Louis, excuse me, I've got that, I've made a mistake there, and they had an engineer, F.C. Dillard. With the formation of TID, just before the formation of TID, the U.S. Reclamation Service and the Statement of Oregon agreed with the contract that they would withdraw all the unappropriated waters from Gold Ray throughout the rest of the Rogue River tributary system. So that then gave a source of water to an irrigation district for diversion from these streams that had not been claimed. Yes, definitely, excuse me. And thanks to Maureen, we have a beautiful slide here which she has put a lot of work into. That is a map of the talent facility pretty much based along Bear Creek, and we call this the Bear Creek Valley, sometimes rather than the Rogue River Valley. Immigrant Creek and Ashland Creek were some of the first diversions for irrigation. And so the talent irrigation started diverting those undocumented waters that had not been filed upon. And so they started diverting that from Ashland Creek, Immigrant Creek and some of the smaller creeks in that Ashland, between Ashland and town. Then really the first project that they did to develop irrigation was what they called the McDonald Creek Diversion, which was actually a diversion of water from McDonald Creek which is in the Applegate Watershed. And that was what they called Unit 1. And that still exists today, however it is limited, it is much that when the Applegate Irrigators call for the water, then the McDonald ditch is shut down. So consequently, irrigators on that system run out of water in June or July, which is only just a diversion. And they tunnel through the mountain to get it on the Rogue River side of the drainage and no reservoir was ever built. And I understand that was part of the reason that we don't have a better claim on that water. And I asked if there was a place for a reservoir up there and I got no answer. So that may be the reason none was ever put there, but probably some further development could have helped our position, but as of now the water right for that is sub to the Applegate people. And here is the monument at the corner of Wagner Creek Road and Rapp Road which commemorates the first irrigated piece of property and the first water right in the state of Oregon. So that happened right here. We had a lot of people of foresight to develop all this and become interested. As you can see there's 5,722,400 acres of agricultural land in the state of Oregon. 43% of those agricultural lands are irrigated. The value of Oregon crops is $4,500,000. 77% of that comes from those 43% of irrigated lands. That's $4 billion. $4 billion, yeah. Yes, $4 billion. I thought I said billion, excuse me. And so as you can see a great percentage of the crop values come from irrigated land which is less than half of what agriculturally land we have in the state. So the figures will tell you it's all important. Pardon? Yeah, billion. Billion, yes. There are some photos of the early orchards non-irrigated. If you notice they're planted rather far apart, part of the reason for that was, and my grandfather actually grew Pears Dry Land when he first settled here, was that they would turn the vegetation under early in the spring as soon as the ground was tillable to preserve the moisture that was within the soil from the winter rains. And the only moisture that we used was for the trees that were there. But even at that, if you had a dry year you could not produce a large crop of fruit nor large fruit. I can remember when some of the demand here was for dry land peaches. Well, yes, dry land peaches are very sweet and very small and because of the size you really couldn't sell them very well. I think that was the dry land peach was rhetoric for the people who didn't have irrigation to sell them. There's the original talent irrigation office, which has been replaced, but I can remember that quite well, and the talent irrigation district is still at the same location. Another picture of the talent area, as you can see there were a lot of orchards. Fruit production was a big item here because of all the reasons that I mentioned. And we can grow pears here very well because we have cool nights and warm days and pear trees like that. And generally speaking, and I've done a lot of taste testing trying to determine what my competition was, we generally grow a better-flavored pear here than most of the districts. As you can see, the orchards don't really look very thrifty because of the lack of water. And of course that varies, as you well know, from very dry. I've experienced a nine-year drought here where the talent irrigation district actually ran out of water the last week of August. And then we have a year like this where we don't worry about water at all. Again, another picture of the drylands in the Rogue Valley and the patch of orchards here and there. Is this like early 1900s? Yeah, that would be probably late 1800s, early 1900s, right. Because really in 1916, when they really started to get serious about developing irrigation here. This is some of the structure that was being used to transport water across the low spots in the valley. That was typical architecture for holding up those foams. Very, very substantial, but of course maintenance would be high after a number of years. So now we have pipes to do the same job. Again, more of the infrastructure of transporting the water from the high points to the other high points. And of course it was functional. All they did is open up a section of the flume and dump excess water into generally a stream. Now the second project after McDonald for the talent irrigation district was the Hyatt Prairie Dam. It's three feet high and backs up 16,200 acre feet of water. It was kind of interesting how that came to be. There was a small private irrigation district called the Foothills Irrigation District. And they had filed a water right on the waters of Keen Creek. But there never was a dam built there by them. So ultimately the Foothills Irrigation District was acquired by the talent irrigation district. And thus the Hyatt Prairie Dam was built. That was actually in 1922. So that was really the first reservoir that they had, which fed water down Keen Creek into immigrant Creek and supplemented diversion from those streams. Because up until that time the irrigation district had to depend on stream flow for diversion, which we know varies throughout the summer and gets very, very low in late summer. So reservoirs were a real addition to having reliable irrigation here into the fall. Here's where I understand they're packing the soil there to build the dam. As you can see, no caterpillar tractors there. That is Hyatt Prairie Reservoir. It's really a sizable reservoir to pack up with a fairly small dam to back up that kind of acreage feed. Now this is the Samson Creek and Hill Crossing. This was to divert water. I need to have Maureen tell me. That was to divert to the West Canal. That was for the West Canal. Which is the canal that you see just outside of town here. Because they had to divert actually Bear Creek to get the water in there. So they had to traverse the low valley to get it to the canal. And that's the billing siphon that does the same thing now. That was actually installed when immigrant dam was built. Because when immigrant dam was built then that would supply the East Canal which really supplies all of the East part of the River Valley. And that was built in 1924. Originally it was a concrete dam 110 feet high. And it backed up 8,500 acre feet of water. And that gave the irrigation district the ability to divert water into the East Canal. And also they would supplement Bear Creek with reservoir water for diversion at Oak Street to the town canal. And then of course the Billings Hill siphon supplied the West Canal which is the next one up. There are actually three canals on the West side. The original McDonald Canal which they call the Upper West. There's the West which that siphon supplies. And then we have the Talent Canal which is diverted out of Bear Creek. In the 20s, in the late, in the 20s the pear industry particularly grew to about 400 growers here. We have about 15 left. They're large but there were a lot of people involved. But then in the 20s there was a recession or depression which put a big strain on all growers and businesses. And so the district or some of the growers were forced to sell orchards because marking conditions deteriorated would not, it did not create enough demand to sell the crop. Then in the late 20s, early actually 1930 when the Great Depression started then farmers in general and businesses were suffering from financial problems and the farmers could not pay their taxes. So supplementary, the TID was not getting revenue enough to pay off their bond which they had sold in 1922 from, it was done in three bond sales. In 1919 to 1922, TID sold a million, $235,000 worth of bonds to finance immigrant, the construction of canals and other facilities to distribute the water throughout the valley. And there's the building of the canal. Right there they're working in nice soil, a fairly easy job. We're going to see, and this, doing some of the infrastructure, concrete structures to divert water. And there's some of the digging that wasn't so easy. Solid rock almost. There was a lot of hard work and engineering that went into building these canals. Actually in 1927 is kind of a tribute to the new irrigation projects here in the Rogue Valley. This was done, this display was put up at the Oregon State Fair to demonstrate the assortment of products that could be produced here. Actually a beautiful piece of work. Okay, the next big project and really the last one to today was what they called the Talent Division. And in that project it was proposed to build the canal from the headwaters of Little Butte Creek and come across the clamor side over to the rogue side of the drainage and that put water into Howard Prairie then was to be constructed. That dam is 65 feet high and stores 39,000 acre feet of water. It's huge. And there were not enough drainage resources to fill it so they had to collect water from a long distance and a large area and it still takes three years to fill it, three normal years to fill that dam. But once those reservoirs were all full it is estimated that we could withstand three years of drought. Now when we had nine years of drought that was another story. They raised that another hundred feet. It raised the storage capacity from 8,900 acre feet to 39,000 acre feet. And they had to reroute Highway 66 to go around it and evolve probably into Emergent Lake. When you drive in the road to enter the lake area they had to build the dam across the saddle there to hold the increased depth of water in. So it's too capacity now. And it's part of the system with that enlargement Emergent Creek by itself would not have enough drainage area to fill. So water from Howard Prairie and Highette Lake all are diverted into this reservoir. And the water from Howard Prairie runs year round through a generation plant at the foot of the Greensprings just south of Ashland, southeast of Ashland that generates 10,000 kilowatts of power. And that was a cash cow that helped pay for a good share of that project. Pardon? What happened to Klamath Junction when they raised this? They had to build the road around. Was it under the water before they raised it? Well actually they rerouted the highway before the dam was finished so when the dam was closed and the reservoir was formed there was passageway around. But the road actually cut across the south end of Emergent Lake. And for this project it was budgeted $12,180,000. $12 million of that, $12,321,000 was actually for irrigation. And the water from this project was to be shared by TID which got the majority, Medford Irrigation District and the Rogue River Irrigation District. So they all have a portion of the water that was impounded from these three projects. To pay for that, TID was granted a loan from the federal government for $5,810,000. They were given 70 years to pay it off at no interest. So without that help this project would have never happened. But it now serves us 30 inches of water a year. I think we can actually get 42 inches of water but whatever you use over 30 inches you have to pay the additional price and it's very expensive water. But 30 inches is very adequate to raise a crop in this valley. To raise a crop of pears in a normal year takes about 24 inches of water. However, we do sprinkle and the sprinkler irrigation does conserve water. To go back just a little bit there was an interesting period for the TID in about 1990. For 25 years up to 1990 the Irrigation District used a choline which was an algae side to keep the water clean in the irrigation canal. And we had beautiful water. No moss problems at all. But in 1990 we were challenged for using that product, we being the Irrigation District because there was a fish kill that happened because the gate was left open and some of that water got into Bear Creek. Before a $3 million lawsuit was levied against the TID and my timing was not very good because I became on the board of directors in 1999. So in 2000 we get hit with a $3 million lawsuit and it was kind of ironic, I replaced Don Maynere on the board and when he decided to retire he came to me and asked me if I would run. He says, no problem, it's easy. I remember Don for that little misleading statement. But anyway, other ways had to be found to rid the moss from the canal because if left unchecked, it's almost impossible to get water from the head of the canal to the end. It will almost plug the canal. And so the next alternative was to build moss rakes which I personally detest because they make a huge mess and if you're irrigating below where they're working and you have sprinklers you're just going to get shut down. The flood irrigators can operate because the moss and the material in the water does not inhibit them as much but it does discourage people from using sprinkler irrigation so consequently we don't use our water as efficiently as we could as if we had clean water. But up till today no alternative has been found to replace a corolline other than the moss rake. There were some... Oh and the three million dollar lawsuit, that finally went to court and the board headed travel to Salem before a federal judge. Fortunately he was somewhat sympathetic to agriculture and the suit was actually brought by... Freshwater trust. The freshwater... no it wasn't the freshwater... Headwaters, yes. It was brought by headwaters and it wasn't because we killed the fish it was because we didn't have what you called an NPDES permit which is not available at the time. Actually the corolline was being used under registration for that product so what was being done was thought to be totally legal. Then there was a court battle over the fact that we did not have this NPDES permit which stands for National Pollution... I've got it here. It was the National Pollution Elimination Service. So consequently most irrigation districts had to stop using the corolline and most used some mechanical means to clear the moths out but the problem was it takes a lot of material out of the canal that should not be removed, makes a huge mess and makes your getting very difficult for those below the cleaning process. Now headwaters actually settled for $250,000 judgment which we didn't have, we didn't have the $3 million, didn't have the $250,000 either but that was granted and they did contribute some money to what we called a moth cutter which was to cut moths high pressure with high pressure water it would develop 3,000 pounds pressure but the problem with it was when you had to move it over any kind of obstruction like a bridge or a road crossing, it would lose its prime and very difficult to get going so it proved to be not a good project so there was money spent trying to find a solution that they contributed $25,000 to but did not work. Now since then there have been I believe three screens put on the canals to take moss and other debris out of the water and put it on the bank where it's later hauled away and they did contribute $25,000 to that so $50,000 that the $250,000 was actually donated back to the TID district and then the remainder was paid off. Yes? On Terry Lane is a small canal and a paddle wheel always has streamers of moss on it. Right and that is there because of the moss problem and what it does it turns a cleaning mechanism for a screen to prevent moss from going down that lateral. So it's supposed to be catching moss. It's not catching moss. All it is doing is turning a brush to clean the screen it keeps the moss from entering the lateral. But it does look like it looks very messy. All right now there is a picture of the power plant and I forget what road is that on again Maureen? Buck Springs Road. Buck Springs Road, okay. That comes down from the Keen Creek Reservoir which is nothing more than a reservoir where the waters from Howard Prairie and Hyatt Lake are regulated for this power plant and there's a pipeline from there down to here that actually ends up giving them 2,000 pounds of pressure there. It was one of our problems when I was on the board we had to have a valve to shut off that water so that the plant could be repaired and it was hard to find a company that would guarantee a valve to shut off water at that pressure. So it was quite a project but a huge amount of power is diverted there to produce those 10,000 kilowatts of power. Well I believe it's... I think it used to be PPNL but it's Pacific Power now, yeah. Reversed? No, no. All it was at the head of that pipeline there's a reservoir there and I think you'll pass it when you go over the Greensprings Highway and that's just to regulate the flow so you don't have an overflow there or a problem. You have a constant supply of water for the power plant yet no overflow into the drains, you know. So that's an aerial view of the power plant which then that water that goes through the plant goes into immigrant Greek and then ultimately into immigrant lake. So that is part of the system to fill that very large lake that was rebuilt. Good question. Power Prairie Canal? The Howard Prairie Canal, yes, that brings water down to Keen Creek and then from that Keen Creek reservoir it goes into the pipeline down to the power plant. How big a pipeline? That I do not know. I believe it's about 2,000 feet but I know there is 2,000 pounds of pressure at the power plant. Now with the enlargement of those three reservoirs most of the available water resources are developed in this valley that can be allowed to be developed. So there is a next step being considered may not happen in my lifetime. It's called the WISE project and the WISE project calls for all the canals to be piped because what we're doing now we're bringing water from high in the mountains and we drop it down into the valley, of course we make power with it but then we have to pump it back up on the field. Some, of course, is gravity flow but if you're going to use a pressurized system it's got to be pumped. If that pipeline would occur it would eliminate the moss problem and almost eliminate pumping. And for the orchards water is one method of frost control. As you've seen orchards in the valley with overtree sprinklers which is frost control that's one method of water frost control. The problem with it is you have to turn it on every time you have a little frost and if you run it all night and maybe it clouds in you still have to run it because when you shut it off the temperature drops again. So you run this water maybe for a week straight and then you've got a spray you know you have a mud hole. So there are some downsides. There are some downsides to having the trees wet for that long but it is a good method of frost control and how that works I've heard people say you know the ice insulates the fruit well that's the total fallacy. What makes that work is when a pound of water drops one degree it does give off one BTU of stored heat but when it's frozen to ice it gives off 144 BTUs per pound that is the protection that saves the fruit. Now that same theory works with under tree sprinklers also and this is something that I have used and tried. We've set it up on a 15 acre block where we have the water to do it because one of the problems with frost control out of the irrigation system is first of all there is no water for frost control and second of all they don't turn the water on until about the first of April and you need protection in say the middle of March on but we have a pond where we can do that but at any rate we did not really know how under tree water irrigation in conjunction with those fans would work in 19 and 2012 we had this set up and hoping for a frost which never happens only once in a lifetime but we got a frost where we needed to hold the temperature in the orchard to 29 well the best we could do with the fans and supplementing with the orchard heaters was 27 where we had the water and the fan combination we did hold 29 so it was actually 2 degrees better than the fan heater combination so in my opinion if we had the wise project we could probably do away with all the heaters which would be a real blessing now when we started heating at our orchard in about 1960 we could buy diesel for 11 cents a gallon so the cost wasn't a big deal it was cheaper in water but when it got to a dollar a gallon then something had to be done so fans and water were the two alternatives and together they worked extremely well alright now the wise project to go a little further the way that became an idea was that the city of Medford needed to dispose of their water from their disposal plant and they were doing it into Rogue River but then standards were set where the temperature of that water was too high for the standards that were set up for the fish so then they became interested in this project they had the money that would maybe make it possible agriculture by itself could not do it and at that time it was estimated to cost $100 million but it's still being studied because what was going to happen we were going to irrigate the lower valley with the water from the disposal plant which was quite safe for irrigating crops probably two-thirds of the lettuce produced now is irrigated with refined water from the disposal plants it's next to drinking water pure but then the standard was changed so then the city was not faced with cooling their disposal water so then they dropped the interest in the wise program but it's still being studied because the benefits of moss control gravity pressure make it well worth considering plus the benefits of maybe frost control plus a 30% saving in water about 30% of the water collected for irrigation is lost through the canals, rock formations, porous dirt formations and so about a 30% increase in water supply would be achieved so that is and probably one of the only alternatives to increased water supply, irrigation water and other uses here in the valley Has the requirements changed because a lot of the orchards are gone now? Well, pot needs a lot of water I guess the orchards are down about half from their peak about 5,000 acres from a one-time high of 12 that's been replaced by grapes and other crops and there are water districts being formed where developments are served, their lawns and whatnot are served by the irrigation district so this is an alternative for the district to stay in business it would provide the revenue they need and inexpensive water for homeowners that won't use it for the lawns and gardens and the WISE project is the end of my presentation but questions are quite welcome Yes, go ahead The piping that's going on at Oak Street now is that kind of a WISE project? No, that has nothing to do with the WISE project that's separate, yes They're piping the ditch, so they're saving the water No question about that, it is to save water and I believe it's something to do with the fish screen and whatnot like that but the WISE project so far is just a plan Just a plan? Go ahead The irrigation district is owned by all the water users and we are all bonded to pay off that $84,000 a year and so we are the owners However, the three projects that were built by the Reclamation Bureau will still be owned by the US government even after that $5 million loan is paid off and that's going to be up to future boards to determine how to approach that idea There's been thought what if the district would assume ownership of the dam but goes along with that the risk of keeping the dams safe which could be very expensive and so a lot of numbers are going to have to be put to that subject revenue from the power plant hopefully if that came as a package the $84,000 a year we pay now could be used to build funds and maybe insurance to protect but that's for future boards to determine but I have suggested that that be put to numbers Alright, anyone else? Little Hyatt Lake, does that have anything to do with the irrigation district? Oh yes, that was the second project the TID undertook and it was the first reservoir that was built for their use and Hyatt Prairie was a dam built on Keen Creek and that water right was acquired as I mentioned earlier through the Foothills Irrigation District which was ultimately acquired by TID so that made that possible but that feeds water down Keen Creek to the Keen Creek Reservoir then goes through the power plant and then goes into Emmergan Creek and ultimately into Emmergan Dam to help fill it because Emmergan Dam after the enlargement will not fill from natural water flows in Emmergan Creek Yes, go ahead The TID facility down by the roundabout there was talk about moving that whole facility somewhere? Oh where the yard is Well the City of Talent would like to have that for the urban renewal but so far they're not offering enough money for the district to move and it's the board's decision and a lot of patrons have recommended this that it should not cost TID water users money to move so if urban renewal can't cover the cost then it should stay where they're at It is a public entity and the City of Talent cannot condemn it So it's a matter of money Yes, go ahead There's no lawsuit right now as such The diversion of that water from the clamor side to this side has been somewhat of a bone of contention However in reality it really doesn't affect the clamor side that much because that canal picks up a lot of high mountain streams that go dry in the summer and it wasn't for those reservoirs Howard Prairie in particular in Emmergan that water would be lost So it doesn't really impact them that much and the talent irrigation district and the board have been in communication with the clamor farmers The last thing that we wanted to fight between the farmers over that water Who was responsible for that? Maintaining what now? All the facilities that we know as TID Well TID is responsible However since the federal government still owns the dams they're responsible for maintaining those But TID is responsible for the rest of the system All the canals All the pipes All the gates Everything And the cleaning and all that There is the Beeson Robinson irrigation district which is managed by TID but they are not responsible for maintenance Yes, go ahead The bond will be paid off in 2036 Actually as I mentioned earlier the U.S. government will still own them even though that five million dollars was paid off And some of the complications are as I mentioned that twenty one million it took to build a portion of that was allocated to flood control and fish and other items other than irrigation So particularly flood control and the fish and recreation would have to be solved in some kind of ownership by the town of irrigation district It would be a very complicated process And we do have a very able board of directors that have had for many many years and to bridge the droughts like we had in 2016 they do shut off the water in October as soon as the majority irrigation is finished Now there are people who irrigate would irrigate all year round if the water was there I'm sure But they do shut it off as soon as possible in the fall to hold as much water in reserve for the next season And that actually saved us in 2016 by carrying 2015 water over into the next irrigation season Now there is a conflict there between that and the flood control because the reclamation bureau has regulations where the reservoirs have to be kept at a certain level to provide flood control and the water is released during the winter to keep it at those levels Now the trick is to shut it off in time to fill and that's where Jim Pendleton in particular has to do a lot of a lot of guessing to do that because it would be kind of a tragedy if we had a rainy season and this water would go for flood control and end up with a not-filled full reservoir I noticed this year that they've actually let out a few weeks ago they let out a foot of water and now just a few days ago they let out another foot of water Yes, because when it gets above the level dictated by reclamation bureau they have to release it How much of that flood control handled by packing the distribution system? Not by packing the distribution system There's a certain amount of water that's held in the distribution system and to some extent Not really, the ditches are dried during the winter Yes, but I meant for flood control Filling it up there Well, so far that hasn't been necessary You know we had the thousand-fear flood I think was back in about 68-69 and the dams did control the floods So as far as I know there's no plan to load the distribution system for flood control Of course, when we have floods like that probably the system is already full and that's going to be another problem if the WISE program ever comes to reality Is it now those irrigation canals carry off floodwaters and put them in creeks and rivers and that will be gone if it's all piped And probably subsurface water that provides water to shallow wells could be affected because the leakage from the canals and whatnot would disappear Is the percolation that much? Yes, well it's 30% of the water now That's a lot, yes There's no areas really open Just landowners are generally okay with people walking on the ditch banks as long as there's no vandalism That's what causes landowners concern if things get broken from people passing through but actually nobody has any right to use those right-of-ways Even TID employees cannot use it when they're off duty So that's how the law is but in reality a lot of people don't mind and some people do So that's what you have to contend with