Ditch upgrade or disaster?

The past few weeks we’ve had a crew of men working on the ditch that goes past our lower house and heads into the river at the bottom of the hill. At first Patrick and I sort of panicked. We weren’t exactly sure what the crew had planned since it appeared that they were just adding a driveway into the coffee field. We were thinking someone had purchased the land and intended to turn it into a huge condo project since there would be amazing views of the valley and San Jose.

Then the crew headed further up the hill - first framing then filling the entire ditch with concrete. Friday night Patrick and I took a walk up and around the hill to check the progress of the crew. They had a few frames filled with concrete but most of the top of the hill appeared to be big massively deep holes. There seemed to be no real way the water would rush from the top of the hill through the newly created triangular concrete ditch. Most likely what will happen will be the water at the top of the hill will pool up in the deep holes and then overflow and rush everywhere but the newly intended culvert.

The really sad thing about this entire project would be the fact that the rain water flowed fine on our side of the river. The real problem was on the other side of the bridge. The ditches on that side were collapsing and the water wasn’t flowing into the river fast enough so the water would pool up and start to flood the bridge. The neighbors on the other side of the bridge were always trying to dig the ditch deeper and remove all the big stones.

Hopefully this project doesn’t screw up the water flow badly enough that it causes a flood at our lower level house. And hopefully for our neighbors’ sake, the city fixes the other side soon!

Fingers crossed!