Moss - I am in st Joe county. The county surveyor is in charge of drainage ditches.
Why the berm was built - I have no idea. I suspect that is where they dumped the dirt dug out to make ditch.
We are no longer marsh land because of the ditches. They were built to make the place useable farm land we値l before any federal regulations. It has been farm land since the late 1800痴 at least.
HA! My memory slips, neighbor. :laughing:
The Surveyor is not in charge of the drainage ditches. The Drainage Board is. The Surveyor sits on the board as a technical advisor, but has no vote.
Drainage Board | St. Joseph County, IN
I had a few minor run around with the drainage board. When we first bought the property, I went out there one day and saw this huge mess. Did some searching and found out who controls the dredging of the ditch. Asked why I wasn't notified that they were going to be on my property. They said they notified the previous owner(she was dead, so OK), and their records didn't indicate that the property was sold. So I asked them to update their records and to notify me if they were going to be on the property, as I allow hunting there, we shoot targets often, etc... they said OK......... then it happened again 4-5 years later. I made the calls again. OK. It happened several more times. I've yet to ever been notified that they're going to be on our property in 28 years.
How often have they dredged the ditch since you've been there?
They did ours three years ago, then again just after the floods this spring. It passes through our property, then under a state road through a 6' culvert. There's a 4-5' culvert next to it for overflow. I'm guessing after the floods, they wanted to make sure it stayed clear so it wouldn't wash out the road if the culverts got plugged with trees/debris.
It makes a mess when they come through, that's for sure.
I don't think you're upstream from any designated trout streams. Juday Creek is the only one in the county, besides the St. Joe river. Ours drains into the Kankakee. Depending on which hump of the continental divide you're on, you'll either drain into the St. Joe and the Great Lakes, or you'll drain into the Yellow River and the Gulf of Mexico. The Yellow and the Kankakee meet up west of Knox.
Anyhow, the Yellow (if that's the one you're drain goes to) has been plagued by flooding since I was a kid. If that's a ditch that drains into that watershed, your neighbor could be in for a world of legal hurt if he didn't get approval from the Drainage Board before he did any work.
