06.08.08
Fish In Irrigating Ditches
THE CARP BECAME A NUISANCE TO THE CALIFORNIA FARMERS.
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 17.—Samuel Page, who owns a farm east of Hanford, states that the introduction of carp into the streams of the valley has fastened one of the worst curses on the irrigated section that the farmers have to contend with. Kings Rivers and the ditches flowing out of it furnish water for Lucerne Valley. Wherever the water goes the fish go, even into the small ditches which flow into the vineyards, orchards, or gardens.
Mr. Page states that the carp, being a species of sucker and having the mouth peculiar to that variety of fish, sucks the roots out of the banks out of the ditches, causing the banks to wash out. Their destructive operations are not confined to the small ditches, for Mr. Page states that he has seen places where the fish have eaten into the high banks on large ditches at least a foot. Mr. Page got rid of the fish in some of the small ditches, last year, by hauling soil strongly impregnated with alkali, of which there are a number of spots on his farm, and making ditch banks out of it. The fish would not touch alkali soil, and where the ditch was stopped at both ends the alkali leaked out into the water and killed off all the fish. He proposes hauling enough alkali soil next Spring to the ditch banks to keep the fish away from his ditches.
Besides hurting the banks the fish create a terrible stench in the ditches when water stops flowing in and the fish are left there to perish in the sun.
The New York Times, October 18, 1891
Note: Lucerne Valley is the old name of the Mussel Slough area, which includes present-day Hanford. There is a neighborhood named Lucerne just north of Hanford, where 10th and Flint Avenues cross.
