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The System manages its water such that no minimum amount of irrigation water needs to be <br />requested by land owners before beginning direct flow deliveries. Irrigation deliveries are <br />generally made when a group of land owners request water. <br />Bijou Canal delivers irrigation water to approximately 296 individual turnouts, 17 of which <br />reside on Putnam Ditch Company lands or Corona Ranch. The remaining 279 turnouts serve a <br />total of 19,176.84 bonded acres within the System. The turnouts, all of which are measured, may <br />serve more than one user or farm, and farms may be served by more than one turnout. The first <br />System turnout is located near the Bijou Canal and Kiowa Creek intersection. Water users must <br />contact the ditch rider 24 hours in advance to request water or change a water request. The <br />District and Company jointly employ two ditch riders, one responsible for the diversion structure <br />and the Putnam and Corona Ranch deliveries and the other one responsible for the System <br />turnouts and lateral deliveries. The laterals within the System are managed by individual <br />companies that employ their own ditch riders. <br />The first requests for irrigation water typically occur near the beginning of April of each year and <br />end during the middle of September. The System manages its deliveries such that each land <br />owner must take delivery of the full amount (rate) of water requested. The System does not have <br />the ability to dump any water left in the canal after deliveries have been made. Therefore, the <br />System must be very accurate in the assessment of losses and deliveries, and all users must take <br />their full amounts, to prevent flooding at the end of the canal. <br />Prior to 1992, deliveries were made to the upstream portion of the System for four days and then <br />water was delivered to the downstream portion for four days. Now the entire System is run on a <br />full time basis. This change meant that a land owner now must run their full allotment half of the <br />time, or run half of the allotment all the time. "Change" days occur every four days, at which <br />point a land owner can switch from running half to full allotment or vice versa. Putnam land <br />owners, however, are still running every other eight days. <br />Some users are considered "junior status", whereby the user has gone through the process of <br />exclusion or inclusion to move District acre water from one farm to another. Only the part of the <br />water that was included in this movement process is considered junior, other rights remain intact <br />or "senior". Junior status rights ride on top of the senior status rights such that if a ditch is <br />running at maximum capacity, the junior rights will not be delivered until there is enough <br />capacity in the canal to again deliver those rights. <br />Approximately 65 percent of the lands in the System are irrigated using sprinkler systems. The <br />remaining 35 percent of the irrigated lands in the System are flood irrigated. Flood irrigation is a <br />much more common practice under the series of laterals on the lower portion of Bijou Canal. <br />Use of sprinklers has become more common in the District over the last 20 years. In 1998, the <br />board instituted a mandatory review process of all individual sprinkler operations, new or <br />existing. The desired operational method is to co-mingle pumped groundwater with surface <br />water deliveries in a private pond on-site to supply the sprinkler. The System retains 35 percent <br />of the water allotment of any user who has directly connected their well to a sprinkler. The <br />System uses the retained 35 percent for bypassing water at their headgate for augmentation or <br />within the System to help carry other users' water. This applies to any user who has directly <br />Bijou Irrigation System 5 of 13 <br />