By MICHELE F. MIHALJEVICH
Indiana Correspondent

FORT WAYNE, Ind. — A new drainage ditch maintenance technique may improve water quality and help decrease sediment, according to the Allen County Soil and Water Conservation District.

With two-stage ditch design, a wider grassy bench is created a few feet above the original ditch channel, Greg Lake said.

“This type of project has a lot of win-wins,” he said. “Not only does it help improve water quality, but it also creates a flood retention area.”

The ditch design improves water quality in part because as water comes out of the original channel and onto the benches, the velocity of the water slows, Lake said. Studies have shown a 10-15 percent decrease in sediment in areas with such a ditch, he said.
“This is also a permanent structure,” Lake said. “Once it’s in, it’s in. It’s not a part of a program where you might remove it once you’re out of the program.”

The two-stage ditch design leaves an adequate home for habitats, he said. If warm-season grasses will thrive in this part of the country, that could lead to another benefit to the environment.

“Now, landowners will come through and use pesticides to kill woody vegetation along the ditches,” he said. “But if the warm-season grasses take hold, you could come in and burn every three to five years rather than using chemicals.” While the initial cost to construct a two-stage ditch is probably three times the normal maintenance cost per linear foot of a traditional ditch, over time maintenance costs for the new technique would probably even out, Lake said.

“The cost per year (to maintain a two-stage ditch design) is probably not that much more significant than coming to clean out a traditional ditch,” he said.

“(The Natural Resources Conservation Service) is looking into making this a cost-share program. Nothing has been decided yet, but we’re hoping for maybe a 50 percent cost-share.”

A recently constructed two-stage ditch design site, about a half-mile in length, sits on Lee Christlieb’s farm in western DeKalb County. He was initially contacted about the project by surveyors in neighboring Noble County.

“They showed me some pictures (of other two-stage ditch sites),” he said. “It needed to be fixed. If it works, it works. “We did lose some ground, but we were losing it anyway. It was washing into the ditch and it was getting too dangerous to work around.”
The ditch, the VanGorder, flows into Cedar Creek. Christlieb said he’s looking forward to a good rain so he can see how the new ditch design performs.

“It should slow the water down, because normally when it rains, the water just rushes through,” he said. “It looks like the Grand Canyon, but I hope it works.”