In the post below about some people should not own land, we got into a drainage assessment train of thought. I wanted to expand on that a little for those guys who don't have to deal with living in what "should" be a swamp. Much of the acreage I farm lies in what is called the "Solomon/Sechrist watershed. These are old names of long ago land owners when the watershed district was first formed. Here is the map of that watershed: http://www.kcgov.com/egov/documents/1488226293_35035.pdf Blue lines= open ditches. Blue dashs = county maintained tile(mains) {not every main on a farm is maintained by the county if a farmer and his neighbors put it in on their own dime. Those won't show up on this map} 

If you look on the left side of the map you will even see what looks like my name on one of the ditches. Nay, that is actually my Great-grandfather's name  (whose name I am using at the moment).

This water shed covers two counties with the water flowing Northwest to the Dausman ditch (larger ditch) which then, empties into the Yellow river, then West to dump into the Kankakee. The Yellow river is the 2nd largest tributary of the Kankakee if I recall correctly.

Back to the Solomon/Sechrist: most of the water shed drains land in Koscisuko County, buts sends the water through Marshall county to connect to the Yellow river.

Each county has a multi-person drainage board who work in tandem with the county surveyor to maintain all the watersheds within the county.

Last year every landowner in this watershed received the attached pdf of notice of a hearing scheduled to discuss, and approve/vote down a suggested rate increase. First two pages are the letter from the board, and the last is an estimate of a single property increase in $$ if it passed from the assessor. You can download, and read for your pleasure, but highlights are:

-- watershed consists of 2932 acres, 5.1 miles of tile(mains), 6.2 miles of open ditch, and all rural.

-- the watershed has been in debt for the past 17 years and prior!! Debt for this particular watershed as of last July was just under $30,000.

-- only $2100 TOTAL collected per year from  a current $0.63/ acre assessment ($5 minimum - like small acreages with a house)

--most of the ditch cleaning in the substantial wooded areas has not been done in many decades. For instance, there is about a mile of the ditch going through dad's and a couple neighbor's woods (all contiguous). The last time that section was dug out was when dad was in his pre-teens. That would be in in the early 1950's (almost 70 years!). The reason he remembers that time-frame is, the trees were all cut, and he was able to walk along the ditch the whole distance. Now, there will be many more large trees to clear, and large washouts from deadfalls in the ditch eroding the banks. So the banks will have to be rebuilt in a lot of places. 

-- last assessment increase was in 1981 (25%), and 1967 before that!

When the letters were mailed and the land owners started seeing the increase from $0.63 up to $5.00 / acre, there was a bunch of upset people. Especially those in Marshall county. "Why do we have to pay for draining Kosciusko's water"?? I kept hearing a lot of negative responses to the proposed increase. I made it a point, that I would be there for the meeting.

Meeting day arrives, and out of ALL those many folks who were harping about this......guess how many showed up??

Me.     Hah! Yep....what happened to all the righteous rage?!?Although someone else did send in a letter.

I went into this meeting neutral, neither for, nor against the increase. I mainly wanted to learn more before coming to a decision. As there were no other people to state any disagreements, the rate increase passed.

 Following the meeting, I was in the pro-increase aisle. Talking with one of the board members I know, he told me this is happening to a lot of other watersheds too. The old rates just aren't enough to keep the bills paid. And that makes sense to me. Excavator rates have certainly not gone down in the past 30+ years. Neither have wages, etc. It is actually kind of amazing things went soo long without more issues. Talking to the surveyor, it is frustrating to him as he has a huge list of claims, backlogged projects, and requests, but was going from fire-to-fire to fix only the worst spots due to the debt. And that was not just this watershed, but all of them in the county. He gave me his own printed out map of the watershed he had for the meeting which showed every workorder done in the last 30+ years. There are many dozens of fixes.

I hope this sheds a little  more light on the subject.

Solomon Sechrist ditch assessment07112018.pdf (2172KB - 241 downloads)