Water management is a necessary part of life in the Grand Valley, and we're doing our best to improve the safety of water as it flows through your neighborhood.

From Loma to Palisade, the Grand Valley Drainage District is working to keep our waterways flowing smoothly - returning water to the Colorado River and making your neighborhood as safe as we can.

 Rain is God given, drainage works cost.

This is a refresher course for long term residents an introduction for newer residents in the Grand Valley.
Drainage in the Grand Valley is a daily and real experience for the Drainage District. The valley receives so little
rainfall over a year’s time that many residents do not think about drainage until there is a puddle where one is
not expected.

The statutory responsibility of the Grand Valley Drainage District is to protect lands within the District

• from ground water (called seep water, since 1915)
• from flood & storm waters (since 1986, by action of the Colorado Legislature)
• for stormwater quality (since 2003, by Federal regulation)

The 60,000 acres in the Drainage District are all north of the Colorado River to the Stub Ditch in the east end of
the valley and the Grand Valley Irrigation Company Highline Canal and Kiefer Extension Canal in the west end
of the valley. District employees operate and maintain the systems of drains which were designed and then
dug under contract by the Bureau of Reclamation in the late teens and early twenties of the last century. The
earliest system of drains is over ninety years old.

The fertile but tight loamy to silty-clayey and clayey soils in the Grand Valley do not allow ground water to
move easily in a horizontal direction. Vertical movement of the ground water occurs more readily but is still
very slow. Drains in proper upstream “intercepting locations” allow the ground water a way out helping the
downstream lands. The large drains deep enough to allow the seep water to escape (primary function of the
District) are the facilities maintained by the Drainage District.

Because the ditches are generally the deepest around it was simple to claim that they could be used to carry
surface runoff or storm waters. When it rains while irrigation is going on mixing occurs. One raindrop does
not know if it is on its way to earth to be irrigation or storm runoff. No matter how hard the crew tries it is
humanly impossible to separate those raindrops from the irrigation water being applied to the fields.
Most of the original drains were open ditches. Today the crew maintains 128 miles of open ditch, the distance
from Grand Junction to Gunnison. Heavy earth moving equipment has replaced men with shovels cleaning
the ditches. The ditch bank roads are not only access routes but the work platform for the large equipment.
The land where the ditches are located is usually private property and the District works on securing dedicated
easements only for operation and maintenance of the drains. The open drains allow for quick visual inspection
of blockages and are maintained as waterways.

The 118 miles of drains piped over the years are equivalent in distance from Palisade to Green River, Utah.
Modern sewer pipe cleaning equipment, large as a dump truck, is used to keep the pipes open for optimum
function. Access to manholes often through rear or side yards is necessary to remove sand, silt and often roots
from the pipes. Blockages are hard to locate. Seeing into the pipes is difficult. Obstructions like plastic snow
sleds are very hard to remove from pipe under water. It is observed that here in the desert people quickly
report lack of water but take more time to report excess water. The District relies on citizens to assist staff by
calling with questions about standing water or water that is flowing where they think it should not be flowing.

The District offices are staffed from 7:00 AM until 5:00 PM Monday through Friday.

Specific questions concerning drainage may be sent to the office and effort will be made to get answers to
those questions.