Hours of Daylight – 15:26

Today is Saturday, aka “flood day.” See, while the Northeast is fretting a fuming about being under water, here in Boise we’re causing a flood on purpose. I may have written about this before: flood irrigation. Basically the Boise river flows from the big Army Corps of Engineers dam at Lucky Peak down to the Diversion Dam. The Diversion Dam diverts a portion of the river into the New York Canal. Gotta love that… not the Idaho Canal, not the Boise Canal, the New York Canal. That water then flows through a maze of ditches all over the valley and, in my neighborhood on Saturday, is allowed to flow into the yards of many houses.

Remember Boise is basically high desert. Water is the lifeblood of this region and water rights can determine who lives and who dies – literally. When Boise was platted flood irrigation was built into the plan and lots were assigned water rights. Our house is infill, so it was built on a large lot that had water rights. Because the flood canal runs along the Eastern edge of our property the water rights of the lot were transfered to our lot. Theoretically we should receive a bill at some point because lots with water rights are supposed to pay into maintaining the canal system.

Now, we don’t use “the flood” as it’s called here. In fact our flood access has been capped off. However our neighbors on our east side and south side do use the flood. Every Saturday my east neighbor Mark pulls a plate out of a frame and allows the flood water to spill into ditch that leads into his front yard. The water also flows through a pipe to a junction at the Northeast corner of my property where it turns 90 degrees south and flows through another pipe along the boundary of my property until it crosses the line onto my southern neighbors property. There it flows into an open concrete culvert he built before our house was here. There are several holes on the eastern side of the culvert and the flood spills out and fills up his back yard. At the end of the culvert there’s big plastic 55 gallon drum with a sump pump. When the culvert fills enough the pump kicks on and pumps water though a hose into the back garden of the east neighbor’s yard.

Now i said that i don’t use the flood, however the southwest corner of my yard is low enough that water from the south neighbor’s yard spills in and fills to depth of about six inches. This is exactly enough water to reach the fourth juniper we just had planted. So, i guess we are using the flood after all. But the water doesn’t stop there. The lot of the house that used to own my lot is even lower than the corner of my yard so the water flows through my yard into their’s. On day’s where Mark is asleep at the valve the water can completely fill my western neighbor’s back yard from the back fence all the way to the street. It did so last Saturday. The folks who bought next door are new to this area. The awoke to find their entire backyard under about 6 inches of water. Can i tell you how glad i am that Dave Hall (the guy who built our house) elected to raise the foundation 18 inches above “normal.” We’ll stay dry on even the worst flood days.