Why is A.C.I.D. canal still leaking? Half of water supply lost due to leaks, officials say - KRCR

Why is A.C.I.D. canal still leaking? Half of water supply lost due to leaks, officials say | KRCR

ANDERSON, Calif. — We now have the reasons why the Anderson-Cottonwood Irrigation District canal ( A.C.I.D.) continues to leak, now more than ever.

A.C.I.D. Vice President James Rickert appeared before Shasta County Supervisors this week, where he called the $14 million the district was in reserve, ironically, "a drop in the bucket," and asking for any possible help.

The 35-mile long canal starts in Redding and, he says, half the water is lost to leakage by the time it gets to Cottonwood. It's flooding more, and longer, than it ever has. But, why?

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"We have gophers, we have rodents, and, also, those clay soils, they break apart. And so, even though we had a great winter, it didn't fully saturate those soils and seal them up. Whereas, historically, whenever we run water down the canal, you get a little bit of seepage; it seals up quickly and there's no problems, but now, we're seeing massive problems," Rickert told supervisors. "We're on day-40 of people being flooded out of their homes."

Rickert says the first step was to remove years, decades, of vegetation that had built up from a lack of maintenance.

RELATED | Anderson residents continue to ask for help as A.C.I.D. canal floods local neighborhoods
"A.C.I.D. canals were just overrun with blackberries, for us to even see the soil we had to go and remove the debris. And, we spent a lot of money, and a lot of time, working on that. We've sprayed the canals and I've never seen the canals in such good shape in my entire lifetime, than the way we see them now. But, yet, what is happening, it's not visible, it's really invisible. Those cracks...we don't have people out there on their hands and knees looking at every square-inch of this canal. Those are things that nobody could've seen," Rickert said to supervisors."

There was no immediate answer form the board because the canal was not on the agenda, but it may return as an agenda item in the near future.

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