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west central Iowa | My neighbor has an 11 acre field that has a narrow neck leading to the bigger part of the field. The narrow neck has a ditch running across it that drains water off of me. With all the rain last year the ditch cut deeper and is cutting further back into his field from the creek it dumps into. His solution is to dig a ditch 500' long [at least] on my land and run the water to a road ditch. The grade of this is close to level and he thinks the ditch would have to be four feet deep at the road ditch which would probably be deeper that the road ditch is. Then he thinks the county would put a new tube under the gravel road to carry the water to my land on the other side because that side has a tube where the water enters the creek. In the 90's we put our half of the fence in and he asked us to try this then and we did and it only lasted a couple years and the water went back to its original path. He thinks it silted in and turned the water back, but it can't have silted a whole lt as the bottom of the woven wire is still above ground.
I think the best bet would be to tear the fence out [he doesn't maintain his half of the fence anyway] as it makes a ridge that runs the water to the ditch. I told him this and that if we took the fence out and it didn't work we could put the ditch on the property line. He said no we couldn't do that because we need the ridge from the fenceline to make one side of the ditch. He owns a cat, I would think it would move the ridge over a little bit pretty easy.
The kicker in this whole deal is that I have 4 acres on the other side of the road and creek that are landlocked. I tried to get him to trade the two fields when I bought my brothers out of the farm a few years ago, but he wouldn't consider it. I access my 4 acres by driving across his land on a filter strip he has in the crp. He seems to think I owe him because of this, but to me, my driving across land he is getting a payment on and me taking land out of production to help him are two different things. I could also improve the low water crossing I have for cows and not need to acces my land through him. This land has been in our family since 1947 and there has never been a problem with this until he owned the neighboring land, he won't notill and the ditch has never been seeded down. I have also put in terraces and a doodle dam which have stopped a lot of water.
I want to try to get along with him, but it seems unreasonable to me to take my land out production to fix his problem. I don't think its reasonable of him to expect me to change the natural course of the water. He's an older guy and the chance of renting or buying the land are in the back of my head, but there probably won't be much chance of it. Any ideas on how to handle the situation would be appreciated, thanks in advance and thanks for letting me rant sometimes it helps to type it out and look at it.
edited for typo
Edited by 801486 3/26/2015 14:09
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farm drainage problem, long post
