Our irrigation ditch is typical of the water distribution system in this region. Here’s the ditch today, very low:
You can see that the ditch is unlined. There are stones in the walls to reduce erosion, and the bottom is earth. It’s really no more than a trough dug in the earth that the river is diverted into. It looks like a casual system until you see the water gate across the road.
This picture is from November, and you can see that the ditchwater is being diverted towards us where it joins the stream that flows into the river it came from–this water just became return flow at this point. During the growing season, the gate is usually open. From here, the water would flow through a siphon under the stream and continue for miles and miles in ditches down the valley.
There is another big ditch that runs miles and miles along the other side of the valley. This ditch is empty during the winter… and it’s another honking big water diversion.
Can you imagine how much water is soaking down into the ground from these ditches??
You’re right; it’s a lot. So much water soaks into the ground from these giant ditches on both sides of the valley (and from the channels that feed off these ditches) that the wells in the valley are actually fed by ditchwater seeping down to the groundwater. The ditch systems are over a century old, and haven’t been updated since then except for the gates. Lining the ditches would save huge amounts of water, but the valley wells would run dry. This little local conundrum is repeated in valleys across the arid west.
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