Water is for Fighting

“Just go on back to your office, you don’t care.”

Whatever, Frank.

Frank believes that his neighbors should turn their cornfield into a wetland in order to hold back water when it rains. Right now, if Frank and his neighbors get more than three inches of rain in a couple hours, a full-blown river flows through his cornfield, scouring the crops and soil from the field.

Me – “Frank, you should stop farming the land where the water flows, and keep a strip of grass growing there to hold on to the soil instead letting it make this gully that you have to fill every year. There are programs that will help pay for it.”

Frank – “No! You County folks should make the tile that drains the land bigger, big enough to catch all the water, like it’s supposed to!”

Me – “There’s too much water for that to work, and I can’t do that anyway, Frank. You and your neighbors need to get together to file a petition to ask for whatever it is you want, so that everyone knows that public money will be spent fairly and responsibly.”

“Go on back to your office.”

See Minnesota Statute 103E, Public Drainage, for a thorough review of the process by which Frank could petition for an improvement to the public drainage system passing through his property.