Thus far, knock on wood, this hasn’t been a “flood year,” but we did have some flooding right before Christmas. We live in a dike district- our house is on the hillside above the floodplain, but our pastures are river bottom land. We pay “special assessments” on our property taxes to be part of a flood control district. The district manages not only the dike which protects our valley from the Snohomish and Pilchuck Rivers, but also a huge network of old drainage ditches which are designed to keep our pastures dry year-round.
On occasion the dike will “overtop” (or even blow out), and then we get a serious, six-foot-under-style flood. But most years, the worst we have is the threat of flood, and the preparation drills that come with the rising river gauge measurements.
The week before Christmas, I was coming and going in the dark, not really seeing much beyond the small span of my headlamp during morning and evening chores. I thought there was a lot of water in the fields, but during heavy rainfall, we do get some standing water that is slow to drain. But by Thursday, it was clearly much more than usual: our center field was half under water, with only the perimeter dry. (It’s shaped like a bowl from decades of old fashioned plows, and spoils dug from the ditches and spread in a radius). Our neighbor’s field was a lake! In the picture above, you can see it in the background: that’s about 18 acres under at least a foot of water.
It’s amazing how a valley that looks flat and level really isn’t, and you can’t see it until water starts to fill it. The thousands of migratory waterfowl we have coming through right now were pleased, but I was not!
It turned out that the ditches were full, and backing up into the fields at the lowest points. I called our district manager, but alas, he was out of town for the holidays, only able to make contact with all of us via cell phone. Our neighbor, a commercial tree farmer, helped to investigate, as he was having trouble with water too. The ditches were too full to try to verify whether some culvert was plugged deep below. We walked the whole length looking for beaver dams, but didn’t spot any. (And on the way back, Kirk and I both slipped and fell into a newly dug ditch, which we had forgotten about: such a cold shock to be waist-deep in December water!) The best we could do was wait for the water to recede and re-check things then.
Part of the problem is that this system of drainage ditches and culverts is very old. Some are likely many decades old; this valley was first homesteaded and “de-swamped” in the 1880’s. Some of culvert pipes have shifted, broken, clogged or are otherwise starting to fail. Others were not designed to handle the extra volume of water we now see, caused by heavy development and deforestation on the hill above us. So, it’s an ongoing management challenge keeping the system functional.
While the pasture was under water, the sheep shunned the water troughs, preferring to wade a small ways out into the shallow lake and drink from there.
We’ve had some nice, dry weeks since then, and our pasture has mostly recovered. Now, if we can just figure out the problem and prevent it from recurring!
January 10, 2013 at 6:34 am
I regularly see my horses drinking from puddles in their (too muddy) paddock. The goats refuse to go outside if the have the choice.
January 10, 2013 at 9:55 am
I’ve had several episodes of rain-based flooding on my land as well. It’s not your ditches or dikes, it’s just a very wet year this year.
We’re having an episode right now.
January 10, 2013 at 5:25 pm
We have the same problem. We have a drainage canal that goes through our property and overflows when the ground is saturated and we get a heavy rainfall. Out in the back pasture it’s uneven enough and poorly trenched that we seem to get these mini ponds every once in awhile. It’s maddening when you have mud and puddles hanging around for weeks at a time. Ugh. We feel your pain! (Also, it’s weird to hear about droughts around the country when we’re so saturated!)
January 11, 2013 at 6:39 am
Bruce, sure, we often get some standing water in heavy rains as well, since the soil drains slow here, but this is not normal for us. From what I read, December was slightly higher than average in rainfall, but we’ve had much more rain before- including in November, when our ditches didn’t overflow. We’ve never had them overflow at all, for as long as we’ve lived here. So, something has changed recently in the drainage system, it’s not emptying out like it normally does. We do have a lot of beaver activity here, that has to be managed, and sometimes culverts just plug. But that’s why we pay flood control, is to keep the fields drained year-round.
January 12, 2013 at 5:51 am
Looks like you’re starting to dry out finally, CF. Flood plains are fickle landforms. They constantly shift and change per each new hydraulic event. We’ve lived on a flood plain for over three decades. Our property is at least a mile from the Sky and when we shopped for a mortgage were surprised to learn we lived on a 100 year flood fringe and one of the mortgage contingincies was flood plain insurance. I told my wife the first thing I was going to do when we paid off the mortgage was cancel the flood insurance. In 1990, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, when I raised the garage door for my wife to leave for work, flood waters were lapping at the fogline across the road. We’ve renewed our insurance every year since even though we paid off the mortgage years ago.
Two years ago FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers realigned the old flood plain parameters. This realignment caused a furor all the way from Snohomish to Skykomish. Because our property is just south of the new map boundaries, we’re not sure if we are subject to the new designations. This information would be important should we decide to sell our place. (The main objection the plaintiffs had against the redesignations: their effects on the evaluation and salability of their properties.) Each new flood changes the flood plain hydraulics for the next flood event. We have yet to experience flood waters on our property while properties EWNS have had flood waters on theirs. Such are the vagaries of contours, elevations, and hydraulics. We have always maintained if we can make it until January of the new year with dry feet, we’re good until the next flood season; however, with the changing weather patterns, land development, and rising baselines in river basins–all of which could combine to make a “perfect storm” of floodwaters–we’ll continue to pay our flood insurance premiums.
Good luck with your drainage issues. A waterlogged sheep can’t be a good thing. TMJ
January 12, 2013 at 5:58 am
Water in the fields is really depressing. In early Feb of 2012 we had the highest water since we bought our place in 1978. Our house was surrounded and I even had Steelhead fish in our driveway that came from the creek that runs on the edge of our property. Lucky the house is raised but it sure was unnerving. Our sheep barn is also on high ground so it was ok, just a job to get to sheep for feed and lambing etc. Our rain gauge starts in July and we had nothing till .02 in Sept. and then by end of Oct we were on the way and it now shows 44.74inches. The sun is out today and I am so happy, 32degrees but I will take it gladly! Good luck in your search plugged drains.
January 12, 2013 at 5:14 pm
TMJ, yes, changing indeed. Though I think one of the biggest changes is the hill, and large-scale deforestation from development of R5 plots. And, there are some poor pasture managers up there, who let their animals graze the grass down to a nib.Then there is no water uptake, and it all comes downhill.
We do have some options for design change. One of our neighbors mostly desires to use his fields for hunting waterfowl, so actually prefers them to flood. So, there is consideration of designing that so it takes more overflow. There is a long buried culvert along the road that’s very small, so replacing that will also improve the outflow. But, ,yes, it’s constant tinkering, because every time one thing is changed, then a bunch of other reactions ensue.
January 12, 2013 at 5:17 pm
Joan, LOL, fish in the driveway! Yes, working around the water is a pain. And it’s hard on the soil, especially in areas where we need to drive, then we end up really chewing everything up.