01/09/07 Innovative diversion dam

Nearly 500 farmers depend on the lower Payette River canals to irrigate more than 13 thousand acres. Since an aging diversion dam could no longer deliver reliable levels of water the ditch company started looking for an innovative replacement. Russ Manwaring of the West Highland Resource Conservation and Development says the old wooden horse and plank diversion dam was cracked, misaligned and unsafe for workers. MANWARING "This last year they just about lost a guy because he got his finger pinned between the plank and a horse and then swept off his feet so he was kind of underwater. It got a little exciting there for a minute." That's why the lower Payette Ditch Company went with a 2.3 million dollar inflatable rubber bladder dam. MANWARING "Its got an air supply hose that runs through the middle of it so that everything inflates evenly and then there's kind of a water level sensor on the river and that feeds back to an operating system inside the shed. Yah if it needs to go up or down it just deflates or puffs a little more air into it. It operates on only about a pound and a half of air pressure." Construction crews installed the bladder dam in November. They've tested it once, will test it again in a couple of weeks and it should be fully operational by the beginning of the coming irrigation season. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott