IID Zanjeros ensure the lifeblood of the desert reaches thirsty fields
HOLTVILLE — As the sun peaked over the eastern horizon shortly after dawn Thursday morning, casting rays upon the freshly tilled fields of Imperial Valley, Jose Romo was already hard at work delivering the water, the precious lifeblood of the desert, to area farmers.
Romo is a zanjero, or ditch-rider, with the Imperial Irrigation District. It is his job to open and shut the gates on the broad network of irrigation canals crisscrossing the Valley – providing what is needed for each individual field on his route. He is one of about 140 zanjeros and water patrolmen (entry level zanjeros) who work for the IID.
Romo, 64, of Holtville, has been with the company for the past 43 years and said he has been happy with his lot in life.
“It is a very good job. I love my job,” he told Imperial Valley Press as water passing swiftly along the nearby lateral canal murmured gently. “I like the freedom. We have regulations and rules, and we work within certain parameters, but we are given the luxury to be flexible. You instill your own personality in it. Your communication skills, how you interact with the foreman because that is really important. How you communicate with the irrigators. I like the interaction, and I love the freedom.”
As an old hand, Romo has seen many changes to the job over the past four decades, and yet he still used the tools that would have been around a century ago by zanjeros delivering water exactly as he does now.
Sweat beading on his brow, it was already warm just after daybreak on this late August day, Romo straddled the gate at Lateral 15 at the northwest intersection of McCabe and Barbara Worth roads, and used a gate bar to open the water gate as his predecessors would have done a century ago — by hand.
“We use this to raise and lower the checks,” Romo said. “This is how we control the flow of water. This is a friction lift. Eventually they are going to go to modernization, automation — different headings, and different checks because we’ve had a lot of problems with this system because it is a friction lift. There have been a lot of back problems — a lot of injuries.”
Automated gates could be open and closed with a flick of a keyboard miles away at IID headquarters, Romo said.
“I think you are still going to need manpower out here just to monitor it, but more than likely they are going to control it from either water control or the division office,” he said.
When asked if he thought the job of the zanjero was in danger of extinction, Romo replied, “I don’t think it is going to be totally out. I think it may be downsized, because inevitably that’s what they want to do anyway with modernization, but I don’t think they can get totally away from manpower — either to monitor it or service it. You can downsize but not eliminate.”
A changing job
Even now, the job of a zanjero has changed. Where once zanjeros lived in houses near the ditches they oversaw on horseback — strapped with a firearm just in case they ran into trouble — zanjeros now zip back and forth from gate to gate in air-conditioned pickup trucks and go to their own homes after their shift.
And, the job entails a load of paperwork each day to ensure that the exact amount of water is delivered to each field.
“I think it is being accountable for the water we are delivering,” he said. “Everything is more detailed, more documented simply because the nature of the system has changed. Things change, policies change. There is a lot of flexibility nowadays, and it is not only for the farmer’s benefit but for our benefit because we have to more or less manage the water now. Before the water managed us, but now we manage the water simply because we have to be accountable for it.”
Zanjeros must be good at math to do their jobs, Romo said.
“We control the water by what pressure — it is pressure, times opening, times width of gate,” he said. “That is how you determine how much water goes through. It’s a formula you can work out on a calculator now, but we have charts that are all made up for us.”
The formulas allow the zanjeros to monitor what flows in and out of their systems, which leads to accurate billing to customers and accountability to water conservation efforts underway by IID.
“It is just more documented, what we are doing, and more technical because they want us to keep track of crops,” Romo said. “They want us to keep track of what fields it goes onto because all of these could be parceled out to different tenants, and we don’t know it because it is just one solid field. When it comes down to water allocation, it has to have a record.”
Every drop counts
The Colorado River and its tributaries serve about 40 million people and 6,300 square miles of farmland in Mexico and the U.S. states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah, according to the Associated Press. A nearly two-decade drought, coupled with rising demand from growing cities, has reduced the amount of water available in Lakes Mead and Powell, which is where the water flowing into Imperial County through the All American Canal originates.
With the ongoing crisis in the Desert Southwest, each drop of water is precious, Romo said.
“That is going to change how we operate here, because right now most farmers can get rid of one crop and get ready for another crop,” he said. “When water is scarce, I don’t know how many crops [farmers] are going to be able to raise. But that is the future.”
IID has been preparing for a potential water shortage due to the historic drought for some time, Romo said.
“The district has been preparing themselves for quite a while about what is going to happen,” he said. “That is why they have implemented different programs. They’ve got irrigation programs, conservation programs. They are including the farmer into the process, so they don’t feel alienated. Like everything else, there is controversy over water because water is gold, and I think it is going to be even more valuable in the future. But, by and large, the district is trying to prepare not only the Valley and the farmers but the district itself on how they are going to operate in the future.”
Following in his father’s footsteps
For Romo, becoming a zanjero was a natural conclusion. His father, Antonio, was an irrigation foreman for California Coastal Farms and Angelo Farms, and Romo spent many hours as a kid accompanying his dad on the job.
“All my weekends — where most kids would play — my dad would take me out to the field,” Romo said. “I would burn ditches; I would irrigate; I would rake hay, whatever was needed.”
Antonio retired when he was 67, not much older than Romo is now, but Romo said he is not quite ready to be put out to pasture himself.
Part of that is because Romo would miss the interactions with everybody he meets along his route.
“I like the interactions with the people because you meet a variety of different people,” he said. “It is not just one person. You can’t look at an irrigator and just think he is a common laborer. No, he’s got history. You will find out there are a lot of people who are professionals and make more money irrigating than they do in their profession.”
And, the job is just too fun to give up, he said. “The funniest situation, I found a Saint Bernard in the canal. That was strange because there was a Saint Bernard out in the middle of nowhere. It was just too big for me to handle, so I had to call and they pulled it out with a backhoe and the big dog is sitting in the bucket. It is those type of situations” that would make leaving the job that much harder.
And, the job is essential to Imperial Valley, Romo said.
“It is part of the job, and I enjoy it. I relish to be associated with them because I take pride in my work. I try to do everything to reflect that.”