Through history, what’s up with irrigation?
CUSTER COUNTY - Once considered a part of the “Great American Desert,” Custer County, Neb. now ranks as the number one Nebraska county for corn production in a state that ranks third nationally. How does that happen?
Credit obviously goes to the ingenuity and work ethic of the people on the land as well as the benefit of being atop the nation’s largest underground aquifer. Just because the water is there, though, doesn’t mean it is necessarily available to the crops that are planted, without a little help.
History records irrigation as far back as 6000 BC in Egypt and Mesopotamia. In Egypt, the Nile flooded for a few months each year, and the waters were diverted to the fields to allow farmers to grow crops where otherwise they would be unable to do so. In 3100 BC, a large irrigation project was built, which involved the construction of dams and canals up to 20 kilometers in size.
The earliest traces of irrigation in the United States go back as far as 1200 BC in the desert and plains of modern-day Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. The Las Capas site, located close to Tucson, Ariz. shows America’s earliest form of discovered irrigation. A network of canals filtered into many small fields that stretched to a territory of roughly 100 acres.
Nebraska currently ranks first in irrigated acres in the nation with roughly 8.75 million acres receiving supplemental water. Custer County accounts for about 333,000 of those acres, at last estimate.
While irrigation technology has evolved through the years and become far more efficient, it still requires a great deal of management on the part of both the farmer and the crews responsible for oversight of the system. In this case, the Loup Basin “owns” the water rights and allotments are assigned to farmers. It is up to the staff to make sure the water gets to the farmers and the meters are monitored for use.
A large share of the area is irrigated through water that is captured in the Milburn Dam, situated just inside Blaine County, north and east of Anselmo. Construction on the dam began in 1955 and a test run was made for about 11.3 miles of the irrigation canal in 1957. In 1958, the entire 40 miles of canal were filled with water and available for farmers to use for watering their crops.
The Milburn Dam is not extremely deep at
4.5-5 feet but the elevation, situated above the irrigation canal, allows it to divert spring fed water from the Middle Loup River for irrigation. The dam moves about 1,000 cubic feet of water per second (CFS); a cubic foot is 7.5 gallons of water. In the off-season of 20042005, the infrastructure of the concrete dam was lined with steel to increase its strength and integrity.
Screens were also added to the canal to prevent trash (primarily weeds and branches) from entering the canal and causing problems with pivot systems. When the irrigation canal began, most farmers used gravity flow irrigation or tow lines but the increase in the percentage of pivot irrigated land has necessitated the improved screening process. Before the new screens and trash auger, the screens had to be cleaned with a pitchfork multiple times each day during the summer.
In an effort to help improve the natural balance of the ecosystem, the Milburn dam and canal system also boasts a fish ladder that allows fish to swim back upstream to the river via a gently meandering steam. Thanks to the fish ladders, catfish are now reportedly caught near Mullen after being absent there for years.
A crew of four employees work full time on the irrigation canal during the busy summer season. Todd Schipporeit, co-manager of the Sargent Irrigation District, provided the tour and essential facts about the dam and canal. Schipporeit, along with Brian Roberts, Doug Kriss and secretary Gayle Dunbar, are responsible for maintaining and monitoring the flow of water that allows crops to grow in 14,625 acres in central Nebraska, allowing farmers to help overcome the area’s “desert” designation and become a primary supplier of livestock feed for the nation.