You can get too much of a good thing.
Farmers haven’t taken a drop of water since the South San Joaquin Irrigation District started irrigation runs 14 days ago leaving the district with a problem: What to do with the water.
Since the ground is too saturated it can’t be used to recharge aquifers leaving the SSJID with only one choice. They are dumping the water back into the river.
Making sure the canals have capacity to carry water is critical in the western part of the district since they are used to whisk away storm run-off in Manteca where 1.16 inches of rain fell Thursday with more on the way. Storm retention basins in city parks hold the water until it can be released into the canals.
SSJID General Manager Jeff Shields said this week until the ground dries up it is highly unlikely any irrigation water will be used. Given four more days of rain is expected with a break for several days before another possible weather front reaches the South County, it means farmers might not take water until mid-April or a full month after the irrigation season started.
What that means is the SSJID’s ditch tenders and others who work the irrigation runs won’t have much work to do.
“We schedule down time and vacation around the irrigation season,” Shields said. “Since there is water in the canals we can’t even do construction work.”
The storm during the past several days dumped as much as 40 inches of new snow in various parts of the Sierra. The snow survey as of March 1 put the snowpack on the San Joaquin River watershed that includes the Stanislaus River where the SSJID obtains its water at 140 percent of normal.
Farmers haven’t taken a drop of water since the South San Joaquin Irrigation District started irrigation runs 14 days ago leaving the district with a problem: What to do with the water.
Since the ground is too saturated it can’t be used to recharge aquifers leaving the SSJID with only one choice. They are dumping the water back into the river.
Making sure the canals have capacity to carry water is critical in the western part of the district since they are used to whisk away storm run-off in Manteca where 1.16 inches of rain fell Thursday with more on the way. Storm retention basins in city parks hold the water until it can be released into the canals.
SSJID General Manager Jeff Shields said this week until the ground dries up it is highly unlikely any irrigation water will be used. Given four more days of rain is expected with a break for several days before another possible weather front reaches the South County, it means farmers might not take water until mid-April or a full month after the irrigation season started.
What that means is the SSJID’s ditch tenders and others who work the irrigation runs won’t have much work to do.
“We schedule down time and vacation around the irrigation season,” Shields said. “Since there is water in the canals we can’t even do construction work.”
The storm during the past several days dumped as much as 40 inches of new snow in various parts of the Sierra. The snow survey as of March 1 put the snowpack on the San Joaquin River watershed that includes the Stanislaus River where the SSJID obtains its water at 140 percent of normal.
