The Ditch Riders of the Vantry Valley

The alarm goes off at half past four. By five, Nadia Ruiz is driving the dirt road that runs beside the Vantry Ditch. She is a ditch rider, and the valley's water day starts before the sun.

The ditch itself is a canal, about twelve feet across at the top. It carries water from the Weslin River east through farm country and past the town of Ombry. Farmers dug the first version of it by hand in 1889. They formed a company that year so that no single farm would own the water alone. That company still runs the ditch today.

Nadia's job is to move water to the right farm at the right time. At each farm there is a headgate, which is a metal panel she can raise or lower in a slot. Raising a gate lets water flow into a farm's own smaller ditch. Lowering it sends the water on down the line. She keeps the day's schedule on a clipboard and enters each delivery in a log when she is done.

Who gets water, and how much, comes down to shares. When the company formed, each farm bought shares based on the land it planned to irrigate. One share is a right to a set amount of flow for a set number of hours. Shares belong to the land, so when a farm is sold, the shares usually go with it. A farm with twelve shares gets twice the water of a farm with six.

Shares also come with a bill. Every spring the company sends each owner an assessment, which is a charge for keeping up the ditch. The assessment pays Nadia's wages, the backhoe work, the weed control, and the concrete repairs. A farm with more shares pays more.

Dry years test the system. The company cannot deliver water it does not have. When the river runs low, the board announces that the company will fill only part of each share, and every farm takes the same cut. A farm with twelve shares still gets twice as much as a farm with six, but both get less than they planned. Some Western water systems work by strict order instead, where the oldest right is filled first and the newest gets nothing. The Vantry Valley chose to share the shortage.

The company holds its annual meeting in the grange hall on the second Tuesday in February. Shareholders elect a three-member board and vote on the budget. Votes are counted by share, not by head. A family with forty shares casts forty votes, and a family with four casts four. That is not how the town council in Ombry works, where each resident who lives in town gets one vote no matter how much land the family owns.

This February the meeting ran long. A half-mile stretch of the ditch below the second bridge leaks badly, and the board asked whether to line it with concrete. Lining would save water that now soaks into the ground. It would also require a special assessment, which every shareholder would pay.

Two neighbors saw it differently. One farmer said she is tired of paying for water that never reaches her field. Another said the leaking stretch is what keeps the shallow wells near town full, including the well behind his house. Nadia, who has walked that half mile more times than anyone, was asked for her view. She said the leak is getting worse each year, and that the board will have to decide something soon.

The meeting ended with a study committee and a vote set for next winter. The next morning, at half past four, the alarm went off again.

1. What is a ditch rider's main job, according to the passage?
2. How does the company decide how much water each farm may take?
3. What happens to deliveries in a dry year, and how is that different from a system that fills the oldest right first?
4. At the annual meeting, votes are counted by share rather than by person. How is that different from the way the Ombry town council votes?
5. Why does one farmer want the leaking half mile lined with concrete while a neighbor does not? Give the reason each one gives.
6. The passage says shares belong to the land and are usually sold with the farm. What does that tell you about how much a buyer would care about the ditch company?