Water Update Part 4: Ditches and Water Delivery

PCC lives and dies with the flow of the Warrior Ditch. Fortunately the club had the foresight to invest in the rights to this access. They are senior rights on the Bear Creek and as long as it has 10cfs at the Morrison gauge we are receiving about 500,000 gallons of water each night or about 60% of our required irrigation amount.

As you can tell the Bear Creek has spiked recently with the monsoon season. In about a month or so our irrigation requirements will start to decrease with the shorter days.

Managing our waterways and delivery system is complex. It works fairly well but there are still plenty of improvements needed. Improvements to our ditch system fall upon the Ft. Logan Ditch Company. This is a company that is made up of numerous shareholders that include the cemetery, Colorado Academy, Montview Schools, Pebble Creek Apartments and of course PCC. The Pinehurst staff is highly involved in making sure these waterways are working correctly. The main concerns with delivery on our ditch are losses from an open ditch, deteriorating transfer pipes, and we even have an abandoned ditch that we hope to revive again one day.

Ditches are not a perfect science. Transporting water for miles you will incur some losses along the way and there are numerous hoops to jump through in order to get things accomplished. The ditch system is over 120 years old and it will probably be around for another 120 years.

The last update is Harriman reservoir. The ditch leading from the reservoir is cleaned and ready to send water for the first time in two years. Fortunately with the rise in Bear Creek our demand for storage water has been put on hold. I expect to be using Harriman by next week sometime. There will be some testing done on the ditch first before we expect it to be used for delivery. Once it is up and running again, this should easily get us through the remainder of the growing season with sufficient water.