ot water issue,dyke building

I have a quarter that was grass for ever and I started farming it a couple years ago. In a big rain I catch a lot of water and now with the loose soil I bui;lt a small dyke on the fenceline up hill and cut a gap in it to let water flow because I didn't want to block flow completely, just slow it down. It is built on my property but the neighbor is raising cane about it. My question is can I do this or should I just rebuild my fence? I though of using wire cow panels to stop some trash from coming in. Neighbor thought it would be cool to tear out my fence posts and cut the wire and though it out in my field 10 yards.

In my state in my county, the NRCS would have a grassland tagged as a wetlands until you prove it isn't, and diverting water around a wetlands is a big no no without approval.

If a neighbor 'here' would want to take issue with a water diversion on a grassland, they would have a real easy path to make my life heck.

Don't know how it is where you are.

Aside from that, if you are channeling water off your property onto a neighbor's property, that usually does result in hard feelings. Put yourself in his shoes.

--->Paul

Paul, I'm letting the water go through as it always has. It passes through mine and will continue to. I'm just trying to slow it down. The cut in it is where normal rains go through. The guy had a low spot next to the fence and built it up to get the water away from him. I think I'll just tear it out and put in cow panel for fence and then there should be no problems.

Not sure about the dyke. But I would have at least registered a complaint with the police for damage from your neighbor and tresspassing.

You say he is already raising a stink about it, well you might as well respond legally.

Hope it works out for you.

My two cents.
Rick

If it was a area where water ran and you put a dam in there and did not alter the course., I can"t see that you have done anything wrong. So what is he bitching about.
If he took the boundary fence out, then I would be asking him to put it back at his own expense. Looks like a range war. boom boom.
Seeing your relations are more than strained, I would give him the index finger pointing skywards.
I would not let a neighbour dictate to me on what I do on my land, seems he is the one who has altered the natural watercourse.

Don"t know your area, but here there are limits about dumping your own water on a property line.....something like staying so many feet back.If he does what he talks about, he is the trespasser. Get local legal advice.

I bought a 40 acre field next to me a few years ago, the wet spot was always terribly wet in one spot, few years later I finally found out - the neighbor had a 6 inch tile draining out his property - not very well, but draining it out - and dumping it onto my property.

Well, the current neighbor bought the property with this already on it too, so neither he nor I were the 'problem', but it cost us $22,000 of tile work last summer to fix the problem & get the water draining properly to the ditch. Worked it out nicely, we both will benefit I think, but cost a pretty penny.

We have lots of drainage problems around here, people dump water on the person downhill from them, add on more tile to tile mains that are too small and flood out the person downstream, etc. Lot of folk think they are only doing a little thing no big deal, but they can easily mess up 10 acres of their neighbor's property just like that and not even know it.....

So, I guess it would bother me that you change the water flow somehow - as that is always a problem 'here'. But I guess I don't really understand what it is you did so I shouldn't judge.

I'm not sure how making the fence wire panels will help the waterflow, water flows through most fence I am aware of. I'm just not understanding that part at all.

So nevermind my opinions on this, I clearly don't understand the problem. Are you saying you 2 are like Fargo SD and Moorehead MN, both towns kept building a higher levee to protect their town, would then flood out the other, so their levee would go up, back & forth.... Boh of you are building up your properties to push the water oto the other property?

--->Paul

It's unclear exactly what you did as well as exactly what he did.
Seems you think you only slowed the water down.
Seems he thinks you caused his property to temporarly flood when it rains.
Any time you plan to change how,where or how fast water flows,you best talk it over first with everyone effected in any fashion.

You have altered the drainage from your property. In general, you can't do anything to increase or decrease the natural drainage. If your neighbor takes you to court you will lose. Better find out what will make him happy and do it. Not sure what's going on with the fence, but you might find out if you talk to him.

I'm going to try to clarify a little better. The dyke is about 2 1/2 to 3 foot tall and doesn't go all the way across the draw, just the center. It has a 4 foot cut in the middle and doesn't run water, only in a rain. I think if if rains a lot the thing will slow water down but still drain the neighbors field. In a big rain it'll probably blow out and run wild as normal. I'm not trying to flood him out. By the way it is raining here today so I'll check to see how it works. Paul the object of the fence is that after time it will catch his trash and sloww the water down anyway.

So you are keeping water back off your land with this dike. No one ever stops water, just delays it a bit, so you are slowing the water down.

As you slow it down, it has to sit somewhere.

Sitting water saturates the ground, and bleeds out of sidehills.

You could possibly be affecting his property in these ways. Doesn't matter if the dike is oall on your property, the affects of it is what counts.

Wouldn't it bother you if your neighbor did something that affected you and your field?

Maybe he started it by filling in some low ground and moving the water onto your land first, so maybe it's all his fault to start with?

But, this is how fueds start.

Good luck.

--->Paul

I have some knowledge of how terraces are engineered, and it sounds like you may have created a problem. A terrace needs to have enough capacity to store all the runoff from the area above it (and below the next terrace above it). You have one terrace that will capture the runoff from your entire field, then funnel it to a small area. That's a recipe to make a gulley in your neighbor's property.

Paul I understand his point. I didn't intend to hurt his ground so after talking with the lawer today I have decided to tear it out and put the fence back where it has been taken out. I guess if he dosn't like it than we can talk about how he sped the water up to drain faster.

Got it tote out.

I believe in my state, any water must return to its natural flow within 10' of the property line on your side. That includes 'dry' creeks that only flow when it is raining. My neighbors turned the runoff from their driveway, that wasn't graded right from the getgo, on to me. They dug a new ditch through their woods so the water was dumping into the ditch that keeps my gravel driveway drained. I had to install 20' of 2' corrugated metal culvert to keep the water and silt from their driveway out of my pond. They looked at me like I was crazy when I told them I expected them to share the expense. I ended up eating the cost of the culvert but I did force them to fill in the ditch that was causing the problem.