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Fighting nature.

F

flying belgian

Well-known Member
"The erosion-resistant quartzite will be used as rip-rap along 1,150 feet of the east bank of the river, which has been rapidly eroding in the past decade due to persistently high water levels caused by above-normal precipitation and tiling systems added to farm fields to improve drainage."
This is an exert from todays paper-Mankato Free Press-(Mn.) The problem is the river is now within 15 ft. of one city well supplying a third of the city water. 10 yrs. ago there was a 75 ft.distance. This is a 2.5 million dollar project to save that well. My thoughts are it would be cheaper to dig a new well, close off old well and let nature take its course and consume the old well. Maybe not. I guess I don't know what a new city well would cost. Anybody? Even by shoring up that river bank, won't we eventually lose to mother nature? This is tractor related as they are blaming this on tiling systems in our farm fields which I tend to agree with.
 
I am a firm believer if field tiling, as it makes marginal ground good and increases production. I am just as much against running tiles to ditches, creeks and rivers, but believe they should be piped to a retention area with active fertilizer remediation, then soak away into the ground water. I believe all should be treated the same, so cities should not be able to run runnoff without retention and treatment.
 
Probably about 6-7 years ago I bid on a project for a town well. Involved building a new well house, extending the pump shaft to raise the motor above high water line of River and upgrading a small piece of water main. Bids ran close to 700k.
 
Mankato's population is around 39,000? A town that size with much industry could consume several million up to 10 million gallons of water per day. Even with dozens of city wells that is a high requirement.
 
I was born in Mankato, take good care of it! LOL. Dad also graduated fron Mankato State. We lived near Freeborn.
 
Seams like drilling a new well is the answer, that may be too cheap. Out here on the west coast of California we have that problem with the Pacific Ocean eating at the shore line. years ago people bought property on the ground over looking the ocean. What a beautiful view they thought, with yards of land separating the cliff edge. Over the years the ocean has been pounding the shore line. Now some of the houses are right at the edge ready to take the plunge. Last summer a couple people died when a chunk of bluff fell on them. The next thing to go is the train track from san Diego to Los angles. It was shut down last month to shore up the track. The do gooders will not let the home owners put anything below to stop the erosion. Every town has some sort of a problem. Stan
 
About 15,000 people in Mankato are students in 3 colleges- in some other town much of the year.
Not much "industry" if you mean manufacturing.
 
In the early 60s,a large landowner placed hundreds of car bodies along bank of a bend in Red River (with government assistance). 10 to 20 cars were cabled togeather before being pushed over the bank. Once cars were in position,concrete was dumped inside a few in each string. Within 5 years,the river was littered with cars for 20 miles downstream and bank continued to erode. One positive that came out of it was fisherman tales about big catfish they hooked getting away by running inside an old car and rolling the windows up. Rumor has it Old and his brother noodled cats out of those cars that were so large they had to turn them loose because they couldn't haul them home on their bikes.
 
Anytime they can blame farmers and tiling, they"ll do it. Why wasn"t the issue addressed when the river was farther from the well. Asleep at the wheel?
 

Engineers are very good at steering rivers or keeping them in bounds. They will be successful in keeping the river on course if they are allowed to design and execute the project correctly and locals do not try to "get by" on the cheap.

A new municipal well of the quality and capacity required would likely cost about the same as the river project. Any municipal water supply is a big (read expensive) and critical item.
 
back in the 70's i also cabled a bunch of cars together and pushed them into a bend in the river to stop erosion,.they are still there, buried in silt. don't know how they could lose a string of cars if cabled off..
 
You have any idea how big a retention pond needs to be, say for a 4 inch rain and an 80 acre field? How much land would be given up for that?
 
I would not be so sure of that. They screwed up White Rock spillway in Dallas Tx. First major flood took out
millions in improvements.
 
Have to agree. There is a lake here in Missouri that is man made and they did not do enough school work when building it and as it filled up there was a cave in the path of the water and little did they know that cave had 2 openings. So as the lake filled the water went in one and out the other. Took them a while to figure it out
 
I'm failing to see how field tile can be blamed for erosion of a river bank. If anything tile should be an erosion deterrent as the soil should have increased water holding ability in a rain event. Now if you want to talk about 4 inches of rain in 15 minutes or two weeks solid of steady rain then all bets are off. That would be a matter of contouring plus vegetation to hold soil back.
 
What type of well? In iowa, Des Moines has horizontal wells in the floodplain that work similar to huge field tiles. Some are over 100 years old and still working.
 
I suppose the math would be 80x43,560x.33= cubic feet. Reminds me of cities demanding developers set aside park/pond acreage at the developer"s expense. No expense to the city. Always easy to spend some else"s money.
 
People are complaining about Lake Michigan erosion too. I don't know, if they didn't build roads, sidewalks and houses so close to the water, then perhaps there would be no problem....
 
"it makes marginal ground good and increases production" David, I think us farmers may have shot ourselves in the foot. That increased production (over production) is why our crops are not worth anything. Let me say that I have all my farms well tiled some extensively pattern tiled. Mine all drain into a ravine or open county ditch which then drain directly into said river about 3 miles upstream from Mankato. Not a one retention pond on any of my farms. I realize that by telling you that I am walking to my own hanging.
 
I guess I'm a dummy but why would the well be compromised if it is in the river. Little town west of us, had their wells near the river and the back water covered them 3 or 4 times a year for at least a month. Never made any difference. Should be sealed. Neighbor dug a lake around his deep well it just sticks out of the water 3 ft or so. Sounds like big government at work.
 
I remember Mankato before the dikes went in. Pretty much returned North Mankato to the wetland status in the 1960s floods, boy that was tough on those folk.

They built the dikes after the 1960s flooding, and then put in higher tops after the 1990s flooding worried them.

You all understand what a dike does? It is basically a dam, so the water in the river can no longer spread out sideways. Instead, the water needs to pile up higher.

The same gallons need to flow through, with or without the dikes.

If the river would normally have raised 5 feet and spread out to a mile across in a wide slow run. But now you limit it to 1/4 mile across, it now has to rise 15 feet, or more likely will rise 5-10 feet and flow faster.

So, the city itself created higher water that is faster moving. Upstream of the diking the water piles higher; downstream the water is higher and faster flowing.

Which is why the shore is ?suddenly? eroding into their well now.

It has nothing at all to do with tile. Not a thing.

Field tile moves water at different times. In these solid our grounddoesnt perc well. So our prairie potholes used to fill up in heavy rain and then flood over the surface in massive floods.

With tile, we spend 1-3 months draining out our soils, slowly, to three feet deep. When it rains heavy, that drier soil acts like a sponge and holds the rain. To slowly come out the tile over the next few weeks or months again.

We have far less over land heavy floods with tile than we used to have.

Blaming tile for the effects of the dole around Mankato is typical, but foolish.

Tile has nothing to do with it.

This pamphlet has a nice summery of the 65 flood in Mankato. They rebuilt the bridge higher, moved the roads and built very tall dikes since.

The river is now trapped and must flow higher, and with the depth and smooth dike walls flows faster.

Doesn?t take much thought as to why the river is scouring more shoreline!

Paul
Kati flood of 65
 
It won't cost $2.5 Mil for sure...move your decimal over one place. We have a community water system started about 45 years ago with an FHA loan with one 2000' well. Today we have 3 with all the trimmings with the shallowest being 1800'. Wells and trimmings are paid for with FHA or conventional loans from nearby banks....interest is a no brainer. We are close enough to Dallas that it's not a problem to get a full service well driller out here to do the wells initially and be around for servicing like when a new submersible pump (usually down 400' from the surface with the normal pool 100' above the pump and draw down at max GPM of 10') is required.
 
I suspect what is called "tiling" actually means draining of wet lands has contributing to the problem. A lot of wetlands that used to take up flood waters have been drained and diked to narrow the river channel along much of the length of the river, not just at the city.

In light of today's overproduction problems this might be the most reasonable time to return much of that marginal farmland back into wetlands.
 
If a developer want to develop property he must develop the entire property, including the runoff from said property. Water cannot run off the property at an increased rate from when it was undeveloped. Therefore the use of ponds and retention areas in newer developments. I do not think the taxpayers should be on the hook for the developers money making plans. gobble
 
(quoted from post at 14:25:02 12/28/19) I am a firm believer if field tiling, as it makes marginal ground good and increases production. I am just as much against running tiles to ditches, creeks and rivers, but believe they should be piped to a retention area with active fertilizer remediation, then soak away into the ground water. I believe all should be treated the same, so cities should not be able to run runnoff without retention and treatment.
Click to expand...


Amen brother! Every engineer in the world channels water to the nearest river. No one ever makes a way for it to soak back into the ground. Then they all wonder why the ground water gets depleted!
 
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