The Sunnyside Canal's New Problem Was Too Much Water
Farmers who once feared the canal could never water the whole valley are now drowning in seepage — so a private company has been chartered to drain the land before the state district can get its paperwork done.
The Sunnyside Drainage Company has been organized with S. J. Harrison, C. E. Woods, W. H. Cline, H. M. Lichty, Elza Dean, G. W. Reese and R. L. Reese as incorporators, and with C. E. Woods president of the board of trustees, and S. J. Harrison secretary and treasurer, says the Sunnyside Sun.
A drainage district is being organized according to the state law, but on account of the long time required from the cumbersomeness of the statutes it is the purpose of this corporation to do the work proposed to be done by the drainage district, and then when the district is in position to do business to sell to it the drainage system constructed by the corporation. Immediate relief from seepage and overflow water is very urgent.
A few years ago there was great fear that when all the land under the Sunnyside canal was under cultivation the capacity of the canal would prove insufficient, but now the fear is changed from "too little" to "too much" water. The great majority of people located here have had but a very limited experience with irrigation, and are easily disturbed at any suggestion of danger from too little or too much water. The fact of the matter is the irrigation system is slowly but surely demonstrating the superiority of that method of farming, and every year the number of satisfied and prosperous irrigationists is greatly increased.
“A few years ago there was great fear that when all the land under the Sunnyside canal was under cultivation the capacity of the canal would prove insufficient, but now the fear is changed from 'too little' to 'too much' water.”
Sunnyside was learning within a few years of the canal's opening what every irrigation society discovers: water that makes the desert bloom also lifts the water table and salts the soil. The Yakima Valley still argues over seepage, drainage and who pays for it, and the workaround described here — a private corporation doing the public district's work first and selling it the system later — is a very familiar way of routing around slow statutes. Water in the Yakima Basin is no less contested today than it was when the fear flipped from too little to too much.
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