THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



135 



AN INTERESTING DRAINAGE DEVICE 



Storm Water in California Cities Drained Into Irrigation Ditches and Back Flow Prevented 



by New Automatic Gate 



The necessity for some sort of apparatus which 

 would automatically permit the drainage of tide 

 lands, through levees, without leaving an opening 

 through which a rising tide might again flood the 

 areas to be drained, has brought about within the 

 last few years the perfection of a cast iron automatic 

 drainage gate. Because of the exceptional efficiency 

 of this gate, which is so designed that it is sensitive 

 to as small a variation in head as one-eighth of an 

 inch, it sprang into instant popularity throughout 

 the so-called "Island Country" of the Sacramento 

 and San Joaquin valleys in California, as well as in 



Automatic Drainage Gate Attached to Corrugated "Armco" Iron Pipe. 



other sections of the state which are affected by 

 flood conditions, and great numbers of these struct- 

 ures have been installed throughout California dur- 

 ing the last three or four years to take care of these 

 conditions. 



Even the manufacturers saw no further need 

 for the gates than its use in tide lands until they 

 began to be called for in unexpected localities, and 

 investigations of their usefulness in these places 

 brought out the value of these gates in draining 

 county roads and city streets. Irrigation ditches 

 are so numerous in California that a great many of 

 them run inside the limits of incorporated cities, 

 as well as cross practically all country roads in the 

 irrigating sections. Where practicable in cities, it 

 has become customary to drain storm waters from 

 gutters into these irrigation ditches. Most of the 

 storm water comes at times when the ditches are 

 otherwise free from water and no inconvenience or 

 damage has been occasioned by draining these 

 storm waters into the ditches. Great inconvenience 

 has been experienced in some cases, however, when 

 the irrigating waters in the ditches, coming during 

 the summer months, have backed up into the streets 

 through the openings out into the ditch walls to 

 permit the drainage of the storm waters. 



This type of automatic drainage gate has been 

 found to completely solve this problem. The gate 

 is attached to the culvert usually a section of 

 Armco iron corrugated pipe which goes through 



the ditch bank, the gate being on the outlet end of 

 the pipe and inside of the ditch as shown in the 

 accompanying illustrations. When the storm water 

 comes, the water itself, pressing against the gate, 

 opens it and permits of complete drainage into the 

 ditch. Irrigating waters, coming along later, simply 

 serve to keep the gate entirely closed as they press 

 back against the outside surface of the gate, and no 

 ditch water is permitted to force its way back into 

 the street. The condition on county roads is very 

 similar, except that in a great many cases little 

 effort has heretofore been made to drain storm 

 waters which came down the roads and were 

 stopped by ditchbanks, where they usually created 

 large ponds, backed up against the levees, there re- 

 maining until the summer sun dried them up. The 

 photograph above shows the installation of one of 

 these gates, 24 inches in diameter, on a road leading 

 out of Riverbank toward Oakdale, Stanislaus 

 County, California, where storm water had, until 

 tnis device was put in operation, been annually a 

 source of annoyance. The water comes down this 

 road in large quantities during the stormy season of 

 the year and had been in the habit of accumulating 

 against the bank on the outside of the ditch, where 

 it made a great puddle, which was not only injurious 

 to the road itself, as well as inconvenient and trou- 

 blesome to traffic, but was dangerous to the ditch- 

 bank which it had a tendency to soften. Since the 

 gate was installed all this has been done away with 

 completely. When the storm water comes it drains 



8-in. Calco Auto-Drainage Gate in Operation Discharging Water from 

 Gutter Into Irrigation Canal in City of Fresno, Calif. 



through the gate directly into the ditch and is car- 

 ried away. When the ditch water is running, none 

 of it gets back onto the road. The photograph 

 shows a small amount of irrigation water running 

 into the ditch and it can be clearly seen how the 

 gate shuts off the possibility of any of this water 

 finding its way back into the road. At the same 

 time the ditchbank is protected from softening 

 caused by water standing against it from the out- 

 side, or from being weakened by constantly cutting 

 it open to permit drainage and then refilling. 



