There are more than 5,000 miles of canals — many of them built with the sweat of pioneer ingenuity and the help of federal dollars — that snake along the hillsides and cross the pastures of Utah.
Built to deliver water to thirsty fruit orchards and sustain rural communities, the canals form an elaborate labyrinth of waterways that turned the valleys of the nation's second most arid state into lush farmland.
For the most part, they have co-existed peacefully with Utahns as the state has grown up, tucked away out of sight, quietly doing what they were built to do each growing season.
But age catches up, and blending growing cities with aging canals can lead to disasters like the July 11 breach of the Cache County canal that killed a mother and her two children.
"The canals were built in a rural area, away from towns, and if there was a failure, it wasn't as catastrophic as it could be today," said Jamison Thornton, general manager of Strawberry High Line Canal Co. in Payson. "With urban development, the houses were built in areas below canals … it's just a dangerous situation anyway you look at it."
And with tragedy so often comes blame.
Canal operators complain they can't control what development goes in around them, yet they're left with the liability.
Cities approve development projects that may be inappropriately placed but also complain that because of the state's fierce defense of private property rights, there is little they can do to restrict what someone does with their own land.
"There are just some places that houses should not be built," Thornton said, whose own company is fighting a developer who wants to take out a chunk of the mountainside on which the canal sits, put in a 40-foot retaining wall as reinforcement and build houses below.
"We've even looked at purchasing the property ourselves to prevent it from happening from a liability standpoint."
Lincoln Shurtz, director of legislative affairs with the Utah League of Cities and Towns, said cities have become better at requiring geologic mapping and engineering studies to expose potential risks. But case law and state law leave a city's ability to resist development very limited, Shurtz said, and it isn't possible to go back and "unbuild" the homes put in decades ago. And so, over the years, canals and homeowners have become wary neighbors, trying to meld in an environment at odds with itself.
A century removed
Canals like High Line and many others throughout the state are owned by the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which then contracts with companies for full-time operation and maintenance. Others, such as the Logan and Northern Irrigation Co. involved in this month's tragedy, are privately owned, mostly made up of farmers and other shareholders with water rights.
What both types of canals most often have in common is that they're old, built at a time when technology was different, knowledge of the soil wasn't as comprehensive and when society put primacy in agriculture.
The onus of maintaining them, ensuring their structural integrity, has been largely looked as the canal operators' problem — a contention that Dan Ellsworth, board president of High Line, says is flawed.
"The aging infrastructure of 100-year-old facilities is a problem for all of us to bear, not just the agricultural users," Ellsworth said.
"We're all in this together," he added. "I think it is very shortsighted and premature for people to start laying the blame and shooting off about lawsuits. That is what frustrates me as a canal operator."
The anguish of Cache County's canal collapse reached a fervent pitch accompanied by calls for change when people found out there's no regulatory oversight of those privately owned canals. Certainly, went the hue and cry, government should step in. Even governor-in-waiting Gary Herbert said as much — if it means public health and safety is an issue — announcing on Friday that a task force would explore the issue.
But government oversight of the Truckee Canal didn't prevent its 2008 breach that flooded nearly 600 homes in Fernley, Nev.
Like High Line, the canal was a Bureau of Reclamation project built in the early 1900s. And like High Line, the Fernley canal was subject to inspection — once a year.
"We're lucky because we are bigger than many of the others," Thornton said, adding that the company employs five canal riders — or watermasters — in addition to five full-time maintenance workers who monitor the length of the canal two or three times daily.
"We are more aware if there is a problem than the bureau is," he said. "We would be the ones telling the bureau if there was an area of concern rather than the bureau telling us it is a problem."
Canals in the urbanizing West are not only aging but have become garbage dumps for city dwellers and the repository of storm-drain runoff fostered by the advent of asphalt roadways and concrete sidewalks.
What goes in the canals ends up on the fields — at best — or at worst clogs the waterways and leads to flooding.
Thornton has kicked out kayakers and swimmers, and fished out trash.
His nemesis and that of most canal operators however, are the rodents that burrow into the earthen estuary compromising the stability of the walls.
"Fifty years ago if there was a squirrel that dug into the canal a farmer would complain about the water damaging his hay field. Now, if there is a squirrel hole you've filled five basements of homes, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage, if not destroying them altogether. How do you regulate rodents?"
Such constant upkeep is what consumes much of a canal company's budget for maintenance and operation.
Canal operators like Thornton and Ellsworth say all the oversight in the world isn't going to prevent a canal breach if someone isn't willing to pony up the money for the repairs, which can easily run into the millions for some of the larger canals.
"The biggest complication canal companies face is funding. There are a lot of them operated out of the backs of trucks with directors who are farmers who are simply trying to make a living as a farmer."
High Line applied for $20 million in upgrades in economic stimulus funding but was turned down in favor of "new" projects due to come on board.
A Denver meeting last year of the Bureau of Reclamation was convened in the wake of the Fernley breach to explore canal safety and how to pay for upgrades, but there is "a whole lot more demand than there is money," according to Curt Pledger, deputy area manager for the bureau in Provo.
Thornton said the company applies for grants continuously and Ellsworth said the ideal solution would be to pipe the length of his canal to stave off worry of breaches.
But money, again, is at the heart of the issue and puts canal companies in an ironic dilemma.
The assessments or the fees are decided by the shareholders in the canal company which is run by the shareholders — in some cases secondary water recipients and farmers who use it for their fields, orchards and livestock.
"We're trying to keep the water affordable so we don't push the farmers into development," Thornton said. "The more cost we put on the farmer, the sooner he is willing to give up farming, give up his land and give in to development."
email: amyjoi@desnews.com