After 30 years of contending with droughts, floods, broken pipelines and people who didn't think they were getting their fair share of water, Ned Madsen is calling it quits.
"I'm tired of the hassle," he says. He's esigned as president of the Manti Irrigation Co. - an elective office - so that he can spend more time traveling with his wife, more time with the grandchildren, more time at the mountain cabin and more time watching over his cow and calf operation.But he has other reasons for quitting. He has suffered a damaging experience with one of his horses and a severe heart attack from which he's still recovering.
Why did he stay on the job so long? Not for the money: $37 a year when he was first elected president 30 years ago and still $37 a year today.
"Someone has to," he says. One of his board members has a different explanation. "Because we needed him. We knew we could count on him to always be fair - to listen."
If Madsen's salary didn't change over the years, he did get to witness a lot of other changes - the ups and downs of the people in the state's agricultural scene, the years of drought and the years of flooding, the high prices and the low prices for top steers.
He remembers as a boy the drought of the 1930s, his father selling the steers for $30 and $40 and telling his mother they had to tough it out - the money had to go for the taxes.
He left high school to enlist in the Marines, served in the Pacific arena and came back to join his dad, Nels, in the cow and calf operation.
Forty-five years later, he's still at it: 1,225 acres of hay and meadow land, 300 Hereford cows, a couple of hired hands - and bills to pay. "Always payments to make," he says.
The drought in 1977, he remembers, was tough but short, the flooding in the early 1980s tore out irrigation structures, over-ran farmland, forced Manti Irrigation Co. to raise its tax levy and spend large sums on dredging, rebuilding irrigation systems, clearing away debris.
"We're still recovering from the flood years," Madsen says. And trying to cope with another drought, he said.
"But some of the changes have been for the better," according to the irrigation company president.
One big improvement in water utilization came with the practice of lining ditches with concrete as a way of conserving the available water.
And a more recent one has been the installation of pressurized irrigation systems. Around 70 percent of the land that Manti Irrigation Co. serves is now under pressurized systems, Madsen says.
And pressurized irrigation has increased the yield per acre of hay and grain overall by as much as 50 percent, he estimates. His farm is in the Quarry Field system. The cost of installing pressurized irrigation in that system was $350 an acre, according to Madsen. "And it's enabled us to keep competitive."
Madsen is glad that for 30 years he's been where the action is. "We've struggled and changed and survived," he says. But he's also been involved in other service activities, too: eight years, two terms, as a Manti City councilman; 10 years - four of them as chairman - as a member of the Sanpete County commission, two terms as president of the Utah Cattlemen's Association.
And 18 years, he adds, as George Washington in the Mormon Miracle Pageant.
"I hope I get to continue in that role," he says, "but I'm planning to leave the battle against too much water and too little water to someone else."