I been noting the story about the irrigation being turned off October 7th in the south end of the Valley.

In going through Wally’s columns, I came across one dated September 2nd 1971, on the irrigation water being used.

“We are nearing the end of another irrigation season and water users welcome it with a sigh of relief. It has been a trying summer of prolonged and extreme heat that has taxed the capacity of the SOLID irrigation works.

Some water users were short of water due to low pressure, but it has not been determined whether this was because of inadequate delivery equipment or because of other causes such as waste and over irrigation of land at less than the highest levels.

The greater part of the irrigation district seems to be served with an adequate water supply. It should not be a difficult problem to find out why some areas report a shortage.

It is well known that in the years of the old gravity system the Osoyoos district was getting fifty percent more water than what was needed to properly irrigate the land.

This was because much of the soil was the type that required frequent irrigation, and with plenty of water available the tendency was to pour it on with a minimum of equipment and ignore the leaky flumes and other wasteful equipment. This practice was not limited to the Osoyoos area.

Under the pressurized system the pumps are designed to deliver a given number of gallons per minute to each acre with a little extra for reserve.

The surplus available in the old gravity days is not there now. It is up to the grower to make the maximum use of his quota of water by eliminating leaks and using enough sprinkler equipment so that he does not allow part of his land to dry out while over-irrigating elsewhere.

It was an engineering mistake to build a pressurized irrigation system without installing the means to control the amount of water delivered to each farm lot.

With such control each lot would get its full measure of water — enough when properly used — but no more.

Absence of control this and previous years has resulted in some farm lots getting more water than a rightful share and other lots not getting enough. It’s going to be difficult to correct this situation.”

I don’t know how much has changed in the last 43 years, so it would be valuable to get some comments from the readers of this column.

email: ruralreportwithlairdsmith@gmail.com