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Going with the flow

Ditch rider keeps farmers, ranchers in business

ALLISON – All of the 300 or so irrigators who count on the King Ditch for water have Keith Swain’s telephone number.

Swain is the ditch rider who makes sure the largely natural channel is flowing well, and that each customer gets the allotted amount of water, but no more.

Water, for any purpose, is precious in Colorado. No less so in this agricultural community just west of Archuleta County and just north of the New Mexico state line.

King Ditch water users share 102 cubic feet per second of flow from the ditch, which takes off from the Pine River upstream of Bayfield, crossing under U.S. Highway 160 twice before it ends 13.9 miles later at County Road 512 between county roads 510 and 514.

Sixty headgates provide water to lateral ditches from which individual irrigators draw water.

“Keith is very good about working with people,” said Kelly McCaw, the secretary of the King Ditch. “We’re responsible for the headgates and the main ditch, but Keith is always willing to help irrigators on the laterals.

“A ditch rider’s responsibility is huge,” McCaw said. “But Keith is there to go a little further.”

McCaw’s assessment of Swain’s role in the functioning of the King Ditch was reinforced by the four telephone calls he received about backups or overflows during the interview for this story.

Swain retired after 32 years as systems manager for the succession of owners of the cable TV company in Durango. He also is phasing out the breeding of Missouri fox trotters, a gaited riding horse.

“The market is awful,” Swain said. “No one wants to pay for a pleasure horse as contrasted with performance horses such as cutting horses.”

Swain, 64, said he is happier with a slower pace.

“I found out three or four years ago that I’m not bouncing around anymore,” Swain said.

Still, he makes spot checks of the entire length of the King Ditch seven days a week.

“But no way can I check all 60 headgates in a single day,” he said.

Ditch rider is a misnomer these days, he said.

“In reality I can drive almost all of it in my truck,” said Swain, who took on the job in 2006.

He visits the ditch’s 60 headgates, the control points for the lateral ditches that carry water to individual property owners.

At each headgate, Swain reads the Parshall flume, a fixed structure that measures the volume flow rate of surface water.

Each lateral ditch may supply a single customer or as many as 50. The larger laterals may have their own ditch rider, he said.

“My job is to make sure that each lateral is getting the water it’s entitled to, but no more,” he said.

Swain has no potential conflict of interest. He gets his water from the Pine River Canal.

The last laterals on the system are the most likely to come up short of water, he said. If they do, he backtracks to find why the shortage is occurring.

On his daily patrol, Swain is on the lookout for debris in the ditch. Aquatic growth is the starting point for the accumulation of debris such as leaves or twigs.

But over the years, he has found a boomerang, buckets, rubber rafts, sheets of plywood and dead dogs, cats, skunks, raccoons, cows and horses in the water, he said.

The King Ditch, unlike other ditches, doesn’t close, except for a month in the spring for overall maintenance, Swain said. Otherwise, even in winter it carries water for livestock.

daler@durangoherald.com



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