January 31, 2008
Alamo Irrigation Laying New Pipe

Photo by Dave Maxwell New pipe to be placed in old cement water ditch.

By Dave Maxwell, Staff Writer

The Alamo Irrigation Company is replacing, or rather adding to, the irrigation ditch that runs through much of the lower Pahranagat Valley with 21 and 24-inch plastic irrigation pipe. The cement lined irrigation channel, built by Alamo Irrigation in 1936, has become so worn that in places it no longer holds water very well. Another reason for replacement of the open irrigation ditch is that over the years at least five children have drowned in the ditch when it is running high, the most recent drowning being in the spring of 2000.

James Gatzke, of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service in Caliente, said the reason the pipe is being put into the cement channel is “to conserve water. The ditch has endured well past its expected life and is falling to pieces. So, this is to help the farmers conserve water, and get what they pay for with their water shares, which right now they’re not getting, definitely not during the summer.”

Ed Stewart and Cleo Connell are doing most of the work using a backhoe. Plans call for only 6,800 feet of pipe to be laid in 2008, but to be completed in time to deliver irrigation water in early March to the nine ranchers who live along that part of the old channel.

The familiar light blue pipe starts just north of Varlin Higbee’s property and continues this year to the junction of the channel near the Frank Packer residence. Eventually Gatzke said, “We hope to sign up a bunch of people down the line and keep going with the ditch and putting in new pipe,” and extend it all the way to the north end of Upper Pahranagat Lake.

The pipe is being laid in the existing ditch and bedded with sand and will be covered by a lean mix of concrete. It will have to be fenced off in order to keep equipment or vehicles from driving across the pipe.

As the project proceeds, every place where a railroad-tie type bridge exists over the channel, like off lst West Street into the new Alamo Clinic, will be replaced. But areas where pipe can just be shoved underneath a roadway will not be tampered with.

Gatzke said when the pipe project begins to come through Alamo it will be 24-inch pipe because, “There is so little fall through there they need a bigger size pipe to decrease the head loss.” An 18-inch pipe, he said, will be used along the east branch of the channel, which runs southward in part, between Paul Christian’s property, Alamo Chevron, and the old trailer park.