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<br />about two days' supply of water for this area. <br /> <br />The whole thing that is unique about this business is that they have <br />actually 120 gallons a minute of water, which is about a quarter of a <br />second foot of water to take care of 40 acres. And believe me, it is <br />going to do a good job of it. It will sequence through seven valves <br />and irrigate 4,800 or so trees on a 18-hour basis. It is sequenced to I <br />go through these seven valves twice during the 18-hour perio9. Then <br />they have six hours left over in case you have some down time and need <br />to work on the system. <br /> <br />This is only in the height of the season. It would be, say, a 3-week <br />period that you would be putting~-when the trees are grown--that you <br />would have to put in this great amount of water; otherwise, you would <br />be running less than half the amount of water in there. It is designed <br />so that each tree can get 30 gallons of water a day under this system. <br /> <br />This is my place. We have virtually the same kind of a setup, only. <br />we are using this micro jet there. I tried to keep the area fairly <br />clean. Right now, it is clean as can be, without any weeds at all. <br />At the time the picture was taken, it wasn't. We hope to use this for <br />frost protection up there. This is on East Orchard Mesa. <br /> <br />Incidentally, there is no government money into this thing. It is all <br />paid for out of my pocket. But I think it represents the latest in <br />irrigation systems. We hope to use these little sprinklers for frost <br />protection in the spring. It will deliver the exact amount of water <br />that we need for frost protection and can be used later on in the year <br />after the frOst is over. We will bring that back down to the ground <br />again, because the water is dirty, and it will discolorc-thefruit;:. <br />You can't overhead sprinkle during the rest of the summer. But we have <br />a lot of faith in this kind of thing. These are the spot sprinklers <br />that are used, and they tend to leave a little more water on the ground. <br />But you can see the whole thing is clean. You can drive out through <br />there, and during the harvest you don't have any furrows to jump'over <br />or anything like that. so we like that part of it. <br /> <br />A new crop in the area that has a lot of promise is grapes, and these <br />are serviced by spot spitters. _:Th~y did a tremendous job this year. <br />They just outgrew themselves. These grapes are selling for $900 a ton. <br />One can safely grow four tons per acre up there. So we feel that this <br />is a good incentive in the area. <br /> <br />Each one of these irrigation systems has to have storage. That is the <br />main thing. You can't operate one of these systems without storage. I <br />It just won't work. And so when we talk about good irrigation practices, <br />we have to have a pump and storage or we have to have it pressurized. <br />This is what I want to ask you people to do today -- is to talk to the <br />Bureau of Reclamation and make sure that they know this is the kind <br />of thing that we want up there. And when I say "we," I'm talking about <br />everybody on this Orchard Mesa area. They have to have frost protection <br />if they are going to survive, and they have to have better irrigation <br />systems. This means we can get by with about a third of the amount of <br />water that we have been pumping up there. <br /> <br />-26- <br />