Deep Trouble Down In The Ground
In my local newspaper column, I harp and carp about what I think is an overuse of farm field tile drains. Our local Ohio farming depends heavily on tile drainage for good crops so being critical of it is precarious. But now there is an uproar in Iowa indicating that perhaps I’m not so far off base. For those of you unfamiliar with tight clay soils, drainage systems using clay or concrete tile or now mostly plastic, to carry the water away underground, are necessary for profitable yields if the land is to be kept in a high state of cultivation. Surface water seeps down through the soil into the tile system and is funneled away into creeks and ditches. Without such drainage, the soil would “lay wet” too long in spring and after rains. Much of this kind of soil is very fertile, so it pays to drain it. In earlier years, just the wettest areas of fields were tiled. (I’ve told this story before but can’t help it. As a child I watched my grandfather digging ditches and installing clay tile by hand. He said the water coming out of a tile outlet was good for a body, especially when it carried little particles of iron rust in it. Then one day he noticed that some of those specks of rust wriggled.) Today, whole fields are crisscrossed systematically every 50 feet or so with tile about two to three feet underground. The result is that after heavy rains, the water flushes out faster, creeks and rivers overflow faster, and flooding on country roads and on city streets seems to be worse although how much of this can be blame directly on tile is disputed. One result that I find almost amusing is that on rural roads drifts of cornstalks now float out of the fields after heavy rains. Worse than snow drifts.
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