Post by bluebar23 on Feb 20, 2018 12:01:11 GMT -5
We're having a bit of near-flooding at the moment; we had a fair amount of hard snow and some very, very cold weather, then a quick warm-up to a bunch of rain. So, frozen ground and lots of running water on top.
We just bought our 5-acre place in August, so this is the first time we've experienced this level of water on the ground. The farm is square, but the pasture is shaped like a U, with our house and buildings up top inside the U. Yesterday we noticed there was a fair amount of standing water in a line from the NW corner of the place to the SE corner. We got a LOT of rain last night, and this morning the water was moving... at a pretty good clip. So I investigated further. I was shocked to discover there are two culverts at the NE corner of our place, one coming from each side of the road, both emptying onto our property (the road runs along the North side of our place). Water was just gushing onto us from the fields on our side of the road as well as the field across the way. In other words, we've got steady, heavy runoff of whatever two different farmers are putting on their very large cornfields.
There's a creek near us, but it's a good quarter mile past our place to the south and east. So, in other words, our property is between the creek and our neighbors' land. They appear to be using our pasture as a pass-through for their drainage. There's a HUGE hole on the ground at the SE corner of our property, where the water pools up pretty good and then trickles out across the cornfield toward the creek.
DH insists this is an abnormal amount of water accumulation and doesn't think it backs up (ie, creates a veritable creek) very often. I'm horrified that anything either of our neighbors has ever put on their ground is running across our land, which must be happening even when we don't see the water flow. We haven't personally met either of the neighboring farmers yet, but it sounds like it's time! What are our rights here? Can we ask them to divert their runoff around us, or at least ask them to pay for putting in drainage tile so that it runs under our pasture, rather than over it? Or are we just stuck by virtue of our location?
We just bought our 5-acre place in August, so this is the first time we've experienced this level of water on the ground. The farm is square, but the pasture is shaped like a U, with our house and buildings up top inside the U. Yesterday we noticed there was a fair amount of standing water in a line from the NW corner of the place to the SE corner. We got a LOT of rain last night, and this morning the water was moving... at a pretty good clip. So I investigated further. I was shocked to discover there are two culverts at the NE corner of our place, one coming from each side of the road, both emptying onto our property (the road runs along the North side of our place). Water was just gushing onto us from the fields on our side of the road as well as the field across the way. In other words, we've got steady, heavy runoff of whatever two different farmers are putting on their very large cornfields.
There's a creek near us, but it's a good quarter mile past our place to the south and east. So, in other words, our property is between the creek and our neighbors' land. They appear to be using our pasture as a pass-through for their drainage. There's a HUGE hole on the ground at the SE corner of our property, where the water pools up pretty good and then trickles out across the cornfield toward the creek.
DH insists this is an abnormal amount of water accumulation and doesn't think it backs up (ie, creates a veritable creek) very often. I'm horrified that anything either of our neighbors has ever put on their ground is running across our land, which must be happening even when we don't see the water flow. We haven't personally met either of the neighboring farmers yet, but it sounds like it's time! What are our rights here? Can we ask them to divert their runoff around us, or at least ask them to pay for putting in drainage tile so that it runs under our pasture, rather than over it? Or are we just stuck by virtue of our location?