Perrine Coulee's Hidden Route through Twin Falls

THE BIG STORY Sunday, October 23, 2016 | magicvalley.com | SECTION B

PART 1 The Perrine Coulee snakes through the College of Southern Idaho campus Oct. 6 on its way to a dramatic plunge into the Snake River Canyon.

COURTESY OF CHANCE MUNNS, COLLEGE OF SOUTHERN IDAHO‌

COULEE COURSE Exploring the Perrine Coulee’s hidden route through Twin Falls VIRGINIA HUTCHINS

Perrine Coulee in Twin Falls

About this project Today’s stories are the first in a three-part project by Enterprise Editor Virginia Hutchins and reporters Heather Kennison and Tetona Dunlap, exploring many of the ways the Perrine Coulee affects Twin Falls life as it Hutchins flows through the city.

Pole Line Rd

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Dunlap

On Magicvalley.com, explore the Perrine Coulee’s route through Twin Falls with Digital Editor Matthew Gooch’s interactive tour, featuring videos and 360-degree images.

Harrison St

Filer Ave

Kennison

Watch for the second installment Oct. 30, as the reporting moves downstream. Among other topics that day, the reporting team will describe memorable floods, development regulation and some of the people who live, work or play along the coulee.

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‌ WIN FALLS — That trashy T ditch behind a shopping center. That stream along a college walking path. That gorgeous waterfall over the canyon rim.

Connect the dots and you have the Perrine Coulee, a natural stream put to work more than a century ago as a farmland irrigation channel for the Twin Falls Canal Co. Throughout much of the growing city that engulfed it, the Perrine Coulee is easy to overlook until flooding or tragedy demands attention.

But the coulee dictates the shape of neighborhoods, enhances parks, irrigates school lawns and attracts wildlife. It complicates commercial development and contributes sediments to the Snake River’s pollution problem. And its dramatic plunge into the Snake River Canyon has been the backdrop for a classic photo setting since the tourists rode horses.

This is no ordinary ditch.

Before the irrigators transformed the sagebrush desert, this small stream had headwaters on the Hansen Butte between Hansen and Murtaugh. It ran just a few months of the year,

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vhutchins@magicvalley.com‌

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Orchard Dr

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Kat Wagner, Lee Enterprises

carrying runoff across the basalt plain’s gentle slope toward the Snake River.

“It was so insignificant that most early explorers and inhabitants either missed it or ignored it, yet it drained some 22,000 acres of sagebrush grassland,” Niels Sparre Nokkentved writes in “A Forest of Wormwood,” his history of the Twin Falls Canal Co. The company incorporated the Perrine Coulee by building a

check dam on the Low Line Canal south of Hansen, where the Low Line intersects the coulee.

Now the coulee delivers water from the Low Line to laterals that irrigate farmland between Kimberly and Twin Falls and to pressurized irrigation customers in Twin Falls. The coulee also catches return flows from those irrigators, using the water two or three times as it passes through.

Please see COULEE, Page B2

PAT SUTPHIN PHOTOS, TIMES-NEWS‌

Sally Carlson, right, and her husband, Bobby Carlson, cross the Perrine Coulee Oct. 1 on the Snake River Canyon rim trail. RIGHT: This fence on the north side of Fourth Avenue East, pictured Aug. 18, was one of Laura Baxter’s projects to keep children away from the Perrine Coulee after her 2-year-old daughter drowned in 1992. Now the fence is in disrepair.

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MORE INSIDE: Fencing grew from tragedy, B2 | How clean is that water? B4 | Remembering Harmon Park fishing derbies, B3

THE BIG STORY

B2 | Sunday, October 23, 2016

Times-News

Fencing grew from tragedy ‌Laura Baxter was planting flowers outside her Alta Drive home on May 17, 1992, when her 2- and 5-year-old daughters asked if they could walk with their baby brother.

“Don’t turn toward the road,” Baxter recalls telling them.

Before they left, Jordan Bashline, 2, ran up to her mom, touched her face and said, “I love you.”

Baxter didn’t think about her children going toward the Perrine Coulee, where it passed behind the culde-sac on Morningside Drive.

But 60 seconds later, Jordan was gone. Her body was found floating in the coulee a few blocks away, 14 minutes after Baxter called 911.

At the time, the mother in the midst of a divorce didn’t know what the next decade would bring — that she would oversee the installation of 10 stretches of fencing along the coulee and nearby laterals to prevent more drownings.

Nearly 25 years later, those projects still mostly stand.

Rain drizzled onto Jordan’s grave Sept. 21, just feet from the Perrine Coulee as it passes through Sunset Memorial Park.

Her grandparents lie buried nearby.

That afternoon, Baxter recalled how, two weeks after her daughter’s death, she sat in a swing as dusk fell at the cemetery. It was a life-changing moment. Baxter knew she couldn’t go on the way she was.

It came down to a choice: She could stay angry at herself, or she could be strong.

“I just needed to do something,” Baxter said.

So she did. Over the course of the next 10 years, Baxter did her research, got the permissions and raised more than $25,000 for fencing along the Perrine Coulee. These 3- or 5-foot fences are scattered along areas where children play, near neighborhoods and parks.

“I know I’ve saved lives,” Baxter said, recalling how she pulled a child out of the coulee while overseeing one of those projects.

Baxter also advocated for a city ordinance making it a misdemeanor for anyone to play in irrigation canals — including recreational swimming, wading, floating and diving. The ordinance, passed by the City Council in August 1992, applies to any channel, coulee, ditch, lateral and reservoir in the city.

After a while, the fencing, the door-to-door community education and the advocacy began to take their toll on her.

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Coulee

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS‌

Laura Baxter talks Sept. 21 about getting parts of the Perrine Coulee fenced after her 2-year-old daughter drowned in the coulee almost 25 years ago.

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS‌

Laura Baxter cleans off daughter Jordan Bashline’s gravestone Sept. 21 at Sunset Memorial Park.

Jordan’s grave is situated beside the coulee that took the 2-yearold’s life.

“I had just to stop,” Baxter said.

The issue of fence maintenance was never addressed when Baxter did her fundraising. Although most of the fencing has held up, some sections have been pushed over and children can easily slip through.

Twin Falls Canal Co. isn’t responsible for maintaining those or any other fences along the coulee. Nor do employees necessarily think more fences are needed, though large sections of the coulee remain exposed.

“They make maintenance (of the coulee) more difficult,” General Manager Brian Olmstead said. They can complicate access

owner would need to install a 10-foot culvert to accommodate the coulee during storms, when runoff rainwater swells its size.

Still, Baxter wants to see what can be done to repair the fences.

The canal company would be willing to discuss maintenance, Olmstead said, but it has to be careful not to open the door for having to improve all fences along the coulee.

Baxter has other plans, too.

The daughter of a pool owner, she started her own pool supply business at age 23 and has been invited to join a committee for a national drowning prevention PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS‌ program. She hopes to bring the A broken fence on the north side of Fourth Avenue East, pictured Aug. 18, program to Twin Falls. does little to stop people from entering the Perrine Coulee. This fence was She’d also like to continue one of Laura Baxter’s projects to keep children away from the coulee and raising awareness of irrigation various laterals after her 2-year-old daughter drowned in 1992. canals in Idaho, and she thinks she can raise money for more fencing around the Perrine Couwhere there is an edge.” for machinery or excavators, lee — if property owners agree.

But canal company Field Sumaking it harder to mow or to Driving her car through the pervisor Jay Barlogi isn’t sure of remove trees that sprout up in rain Sept. 21, Baxter was amazed fencing’s effectiveness. the right of way. to rediscover all her fencing “Everyone agrees that if you Of course, the reason for the projects. And her eyes lit up put a fence up, the young ones fences is public safety: preare still going to get around that with inspiration as she pointed venting children from getting out other areas along the coulee fence,” he said. “A fence really too close to the weeds on either only works to keep a toddler out. — near apartment complexes, bank.

“The banks are really straight It will not keep a 5-year-old boy businesses and busy roads — where fencing could go. out, or a 10-year-old boy.” up and down,” Baxter said, “I’m ready,” Baxter said, “to go Piping the coulee might be pointing to an area not far from back out again and see what we more effective for security, Olwhere it’s believed Jordan fell can do.” mstead said, but the problem is in. “They don’t look like it. You —Heather Kennison walk to the edge, you don’t know extraordinary cost. A property

as it floats downstream. And on the opposite bank, where more backyards line the coulee, a pair From B1 of wooden chairs is evidence that at least one household About 16 miles long when it watches the ducks that hang out started on the butte, the Perrine here.

Coulee is 12 miles now.

Then the coulee disappears.

In early April, the canal comHuge culverts take it under pany turns about 10 cubic feet Blue Lakes Boulevard and the per second of water into the Fred Meyer parking lot, where coulee. The flow peaks in late shoppers have little reason to reJune and July at about 120 cfs, a member the massive 1979 flood 10th of the Low Line’s volume. that poured through the mall “It’s one of the biggest delivformerly on this site. The water ery ditches, because it serves reemerges briefly, tumbling out a lot of acres,” canal company of its underground pipe into a General Manager Brian Olmdeep ditch, then passes into a stead said. graffiti-marred culvert under In September the company Fillmore Street. starts bringing down the flow West of Fillmore, the coulee again, letting the coulee go dry plays a pleasant role again: supby Nov. 1 — except for intermitplying the soundtrack for the tent stormwater and seepage city’s Courtney Conservation from the canal company’s tile PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS‌ Park, where graveled paths wind drains. among plants chosen to demonBut the Perrine Coulee still Brian Olmstead, general manager of Twin Falls Canal Co., gives a tour of strate low-irrigation landscapperforms its original job, too — locations along the Perrine Coulee on Sept. 30. ing. draining thousands of acres — On the College of Southern ered picnic tables. and can flood dramatically in big past as it makes a respectful Idaho campus, walking paths As the coulee passes through trip through Sunset Memorial storms. parallel the coulee, and a disc more neighborhoods, some Park, passing serenely under “We use it as a delivery ditch, golf course capitalizes on the decorative bridges, among rows residents mow to the edge and but Mother Nature uses it as a water hazard. Beside the Idaho incorporate it as a landscaping of gravestones, under droopflood channel,” Olmstead said.

National Guard’s fenced yard of element. Others let overgrown ing willows and past memorial And when she does, Mother trucks, a headgate diverts water weeds and bushes clog the Nature is oblivious to the neigh- benches adorned with a toy to irrigate farms to the north; banks, or toss their grass cliptruck or a stone dog. borhoods that replaced farm pings over their backyard fences. here you’ll find a nasty-smelling Now fenced in places, the fields. heap of the trash, branches, dry But nobody who lives beside coulee runs beside residential Southeast of Twin Falls, a grass and nameless scum colthe coulee can ignore it altoyards east of downtown, where broad stream lined with grasses lected by its grates. gether. squashes ripen on their vines, and Russian olives and accomOn the college’s land north of The Perrine Coulee takes a families play in backyard pools panied by birdsong heads for North College Road, a log fence beating as it passes behind the town past dairy cows and corn- and horses are pastured behind separates the coulee from the houses, then emerges at Addison stores and parking lots of the fields, past a sugar factory and Avenue East beside an Orthodox Lynwood Shopping Center, col- Twin Falls Farmers Market’s a highway district’s mounds of shoppers. Wander beyond that lecting beer cans, foam cups, Christian church. gravel and broken asphalt. It fence and you’ll find an urban liquor bottles and mystery garOn the grassy grounds of the winds between lines of newly oasis where birds burst from the manufactured Jayco trailers and Sunnyview Court housing units, bage. The gray-brown water is treetops and deer leave tracks so murky that when a crawdad Kelly Walker’s rural home, where ducks attracted by the coulee in the mud. It’s a wetland of slides off a rock, it disappears rest in the shade of a crabapple ripe peaches hang in summer cattails and bulrushes, a series immediately. Yet a duck might tree, and a footbridge over the sunshine and his tidy lawn is of settling ponds that clean the emerge from the overhanging water connects the residents’ mown right to the water’s edge. coulee’s water on its way to the recreation center with their cov- bushes to grab a decaying apple The water tells nothing of its

Snake River.

This is the coulee’s home stretch: through the manicured lawns of the Lazy J Ranch manufactured homes, and under Pole Line Road in a culvert large enough for a walking path beside the water.

A short leg of the city’s paved Snake River Canyon rim trail extends south along the coulee, crossing it on a footbridge. Rim overlooks on both sides of the coulee capitalize on a dramatic view: its long free-fall from the canyon cliff. Birds circle in front of the waterfall as it crashes onto the rocks below.

Inside the canyon, where raptors scream and ripening apples weigh down tree branches, a final series of settling ponds provides a setting for Centennial Waterfront Park’s picnic tables and grills. The coulee carves a short ravine on its way to the Snake River, then eases quietly into the Snake’s greener waters.

It mingles, and it’s gone.

Enterprise Editor Virginia Hutchins, left, led the project team on an August tour of the Perrine Coulee’s route through Twin Falls. She enjoys walking along the coulee on the college campus and near the canyon rim.

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THE BIG STORY

Times-News

Sunday, October 23, 2016 | B3

Harmon Park fishing derbies ‌In the June 7, 1964, edition of the Times-News, the front-page photo pictured hundreds of children, almost shoulder to shoulder, fishing in a lateral of the Perrine Coulee.

The attraction? About 500 trout stocked in the Harmon Park section of the lateral for a Saturday-morning fishing derby sponsored by the local Moose lodge.

Trout farms donated the fish, and Twin Falls merchants supplied an array of prizes for the anglers with the biggest fish, the most fish, the first fish, the “most original fish” (the newspaper report is vague on that definition), the littlest fish, the angler traveling the farthest to the derby, the child with the most freckles and the first angler to fall into the water.

“There were no injuries reported from flying hooks, although some 300 children took part,” the newspaper reported.

Linda Rousseau, that day’s winner of the girls’ prize for biggest fish, won a $10 bank account at Twin Falls Bank & Trust. She didn’t touch it until she graduated from high school; the account had grown dramatically.

“Of course, that’s when banks were paying good percentages,” said Rousseau, now 65.

The annual fishing derby in Harmon Park used the Perrine Coulee’s Lateral 38, which comes off the coulee about a half-mile upstream from the park, said Brian Olmstead, general manager of Twin Falls Canal Co. Born in 1952, he remembers the derbies

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tised the derbies. Larry Henington remembered catching someone’s stringer with fish on it.

“Won a fishing pole for that one,” he wrote.

Not every derby was injury-free.

“Getting a line in was difficult.

Kids were shoulder to shoulder and there was a lot of tangled lines,” Robert Burton posted. “I caught the kid on the other side of (the) canal.”

Perhaps the lure of prizes outweighed the danger.

“We fished the derby every year,” Margaret Klingbeil posted.

“I won a sleeping bag for the biggest fish one year. Years later my son won a tackle box for being the youngest. After the derby was over we would fish for a week and caught many fish.”

When Klingbeil — then Margaret Carr — caught her winning fish in the late ’50s or early ’60s, the newspaper published a picture of her with the boy who won, Alan Brauer.

“Years later we were married,” she wrote. “Destiny I guess.”

Lateral 38’s route through Harmon Park had a less appealing side, too, because it runs between several of the park’s baseball diamonds.

“Every foul ball ended up in the lateral and you’d fish them out COURTESY OF LINDA ROUSSEAU‌ and play with a wet ball part of the Linda Rousseau, second from right, won the girls’ prize for biggest fish at the June 6, 1964, Harmon Park fishing game,” Olmstead said. derby.

Lateral 38 is still there, but it’s underground now. With the help of a grant, the city piped it in the canal. We would line the from his childhood in the late ’50s year.” banks and catch fish all day,” Mike decades ago — but not before A question about the Harmon and early ’60s but never won a Reid posted. “Lots of kids and lots Jim VerWey, Okie Miller, Dale Park fishing derbies let loose a prize.

Sorenson and lots of other Twin of prizes.” flood of memories in a closed “They’d really load it up with Falls children had to swim into the Okie Miller recalled winning a Facebook group called “You Might fish,” he said. “They didn’t live coulee’s waters for foul balls. toy Greyhound bus for accidenBe From Twin Falls, Idaho...” long, because that was pretty Just ask that Facebook group. tally falling in. Sandra Ford re“They would screen off both muddy water in those days — and —Virginia Hutchins counted a radio jingle that adverends of the canal and plant fish way too warm in that time of

The trouble with trees COURTESY OF TWIN FALLS COUNTY‌

The narrow parcel of land marked by a pin runs alongside the Perrine Coulee north of Fourth Avenue East. The tax deeded property is for sale through the Twin Falls County Commission.

Forlorn piece of land ‌For just shy of $900, a piece of waterfront property in Twin Falls could be yours!

But there’s a catch (or two): You can’t build anything on it.

Property taxes are about $50 a year. And it’s about 27 feet across at its widest point, including half the width of the Perrine Coulee.

Still interested? Just make an offer to the Twin Falls County Commission, and it could be made yours during a public meeting.

No? Apparently, no one else wants it either. At least, nobody has come forward.

Just north of Fourth Avenue East and west of Wakefield Street, the 450-foot-long stretch of property extending to the middle of the Perrine Coulee is a peculiarity. Property records show a subdivision platted in 1907 was divided in pieces, splitting it east of the coulee and leaving one solitary parcel between lots with houses.

The long, narrow parcel was tax deeded to Twin Falls County in 2013 after previous owners were delinquent on the property taxes for three years.

The assessed value is $2,562, but real value is in the eye of the

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buyer, Twin Falls County Treasurer Debbie Kauffman said.

“I would think unless you own the property right next to it, it wouldn’t serve you any purpose to have it,” she said.

Jim Bartholome owns a two-acre lot which shares most of the parcel’s east border. The lot contains a tenant house with access on Elizabeth Park Drive.

Bartholome said he’d never heard about the property in question being up for sale and probably wouldn’t be interested.

Being next to the coulee, it could be more of a liability than an asset, he said.

“It’s really not close at all to the house itself,” Bartholome said. “I don’t see what it would do for me.”

Because the entire width of the tax deeded parcel is in the Twin Falls Canal Co.’s right of way, it must be kept clear of obstacles such as buildings and trees.

As of Sept. 30, the county’s uncollected taxes on the property were $887.88.

—Heather Kennison

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Reporter Heather Kennison, right, enjoyed watching ducks getting into the Perrine Coulee in a peaceful Twin Falls housing development.

She has fostered a love of birds since childhood, raising chickens in 4-H.

‌If Twin Falls Canal Co. can’t maintain the Perrine Coulee when it needs to, flooding can result. So having access to the coulee through land owned by residents and businesses is particularly important.

While the city and the canal company work together to protect the stategranted 30-foot right of way along the coulee, regulating build- Olmstead ing placement doesn’t solve all the issues.

Encroachment means anything that impedes access, canal company Field Supervisor Jay Barlogi said. That could include benches, gravestones, fences or trees — many of which aren’t addressed in city codes but still hinder maintenance.

Mowing and spraying are the most effective ways the canal company maintains the coulee because they’re the best control on trees, General Manager Brian Olmstead said. His crew aims to mow and spray three times a year.

“Generally we get at least twice on anything we can reach,” Olmstead said.

Trees are one of the worst encroachments because they expand over time. Even trees planted outside the right of way may grow into it. Ones planted near the coulee narrow the channel as they expand. Roots and branches in the coulee use up gallons of water, while fallen branches block screens and re-

strict the flow.

When this happens, flooding worsens dramatically, Olmstead said. The narrower channel gets plugged and water slops over the edge — and far beyond.

Russian olives are a canal company’s worst enemy; the prolific, thorny and fast-growing trees easily get out of hand.

“If you got one, pretty soon you got a thousand,” he said.

Twin Falls Canal Co. placed rocks along some areas of the Perrine Coulee to help slow the water and control erosion. The company’s other maintenance on the coulee includes digging the ditch with a track hoe.

Workers scoop out extra dirt on the bottom and build up the sides. This may be required once a year to once a decade, depending on the area and how good farmers are at keeping mud and soil from entering the coulee.

“Some farmers don’t care — they just wash it off like it’ll grow back,” Olmstead said.

Most, however, want to keep their good farming topsoil where it belongs: on their land.

Besides trees and landscaping features, fences can create a big problem for coulee maintenance.

Any fence that is less than 6 feet tall does not have to get city approval, Zoning and Development Manager Renee Carraway-Johnson said, so there isn’t much City Hall can do to prevent that encroachment.

Twin Falls Canal Co. “not only has the right to maintain the ditch but is required by law to maintain the ditch in good

repair or be liable for damages if we are neglectful,” Olmstead said. “Therein lies the conundrum; we can’t keep the ditch in good and safe repair if we can’t secure the right of way to do that maintenance.”

Responsibility falls both ways, however. A homeowner whose encroachments hinder the canal company’s access would have a hard time arguing that the company is responsible for the results of no maintenance, Olmstead said. “We accept no liability for flooding in areas where we have no ability to maintain.”

Also, he said, the company is not responsible for damage caused by large rainstorms.

When the company can’t get its maintenance equipment in, weeds and grasses thicken along the coulee’s banks. Storms have been more destructive in these areas over the past few years, Olmstead said, and he worries about future damage if property owners don’t do something to restore access. An “urban jungle” is less attractive and more flood-prone than a well-manicured lawn.

Realize you’re among the offenders?

The canal company, he said, is willing to help remove small trees and brush if a property owner asks — and gives the company the access to do the job.

—Heather Kennison

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PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS‌

A Twin Falls Canal Co. worker mows grass along the Perrine Coulee’s bank Sept. 30 near the Wagner Transportation lot in Twin Falls.

THE BIG STORY

B4 | Sunday, October 23, 2016

Times-News

How clean is that water? ‌Clarence Robison’s shoes squished as he walked toward the Perrine Coulee on Sept. 6.

Robison, a University of Idaho water resources research associate, was at Sunset Memorial Park to test the coulee’s water.

As his wet shoes testified, it wasn’t his first stop of the day.

For 20 years, Twin Falls Canal Co. has hired the U of I to monitor the Perrine Coulee as part of its effort to clean up the coulee and 13 other irrigation return flows to the Snake River.

“TFCC decided that voluntary monitoring and cleanup of our return flows would be the best action to prevent strict regulation and possible penalties later on,” General Manager Brian Olmstead said in an email. “And of course the vast majority of our farmers realize that eroding our topsoil into the Snake River greatly reduces the future production ability of the farm.”

The canal company spends $30,000 on water-quality monitoring each year. The focus is on sediment and nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen, which promote algae growth.

“If you keep the soil from getting in there,” Olmstead said, “you are likely to keep the chemicals that might be applied to the fields out of the water.”

The company’s wetlands on the Perrine Coulee and other streams help clean the water before it reaches the Snake.

“People like the river to look nice and clear,” Olmstead said.

“If you get a lot of plants and algae, it clogs up boats and makes it hard to swim. It can deplete oxygen for fisheries. You want

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PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS‌

Research support scientist Clarence Robison pulls water out of the Perrine Coulee on Sept. 6 at Sunset Memorial Park to test the water for various elements. Robison’s multi-functional probe collects data on water temperature, dissolved oxygen, electrical conductivity and pH levels. some plants and algae, you just don’t want to overload it.”

The U of I’s Perrine Coulee monitoring changed locations several times because of access.

Since 2013, Robison has tested the coulee at the cemetery, as it enters the city.

“We are not monitoring impacts of the cemetery,” Robison said. “We are monitoring what was coming in.”

He samples the water at twoweek intervals from April to October, during the irrigation

season. The company’s $30,000 provides supplies, time, mileage and sample analysis, Robison said; testing can cost around $120 per sample. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation does the lab analysis, and Robison evaluates the samples for soil particles such as sand, silt and clay.

So how is the coulee’s water quality? Much better than 25 years ago.

Water-quality targets for the Perrine Coulee — as for other irrigation return flows to the

Snake River — include a season average of 52 milligrams per liter of suspended sediment.

Robison’s Sept. 6 sample had 30 mg/l, and the 2016 season’s Perrine Coulee samples are averaging 49 mg/l — higher than the 25 mg/l average of 2006, but much lower than the 192 mg/l average for Perrine Coulee samples taken from 1990 to 1992 for statefunded water quality projects.

Even 192 is clean compared with samples Robison took from other locations in the late 1970s,

which reached as high as 5,000 mg/l.

“Soil erosion was noted in the mid ‘70s,” he said. “Since that time, there’s been a big effort on educating irrigators and farmers on the importance of keeping your soil on the field and not in a coulee that goes to the river.”

The Perrine Coulee’s total phosphorus has also dropped significantly in the past 25 years, but it’s still above the target level.

—Tetona Dunlap

Water-safety education ‌Stormy Hopple has one water-safety message for children: Stay away from the Perrine Coulee and all other canals.

“There are better places to play,” Hopple said. “Stay away from canals, and never in your whole life play in water by yourself.”

For the past four years, Hopple has gone into Magic Valley classrooms to teach children about water dangers.

“I talk to them about boat safety and general water safety,” he said. “If I can save one child, I’ll never know it. If I can do that, I succeeded.”

Hopple talks to about 4,500 students each November to January. Some of them are at Morningside Elementary, where a high chainlink fence separates the Perrine Coulee from the school playground’s swings and slides.

“We think it’s an important message we need to get out,” said Brian Olmstead, Twin Falls Canal Co. general manager. “We don’t want anyone to drown in the canals. We think the water safety program in the school really helps.”

Canals are dangerous because the cold waters are swift and the banks are steep.

“One little trip and then they can’t get out,” Olmstead said. “In a lot of cases it’s quite a bit swifter than it looks like. You look at a canal and it looks pretty benign.”

Hopple’s presentations for second-graders teach general water safety. For third-graders, he uses a model of an aquifer and with food coloring demonstrates how one thing affects another. He teaches fourth-graders about irrigation in the Snake River Basin, and for the fifth-graders he uses a model of a farm, a forest and a suburban area to show how they all need to be protected and restored.

When Hopple, 67, was growing up in Buhl, he swam in canals. Back then, no programs educated children about the dangers. Now the canal company’s water-safety program has been around for more than 20 years.

Hopple said farmers have lost horses and cattle in canals.

It’s also important to keep your dogs away.

“Dogs that love to swim don’t understand that a culvert pipe will suck them in and drown them,” Olmstead said. “The dog owners need to be pretty aware of where they let animals in the canal. There are banks steep enough even dogs can’t get out of them.”

—Tetona Dunlap

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PAT SUTPHIN PHOTOS, TIMES-NEWS‌

The Perrine Coulee flows through the peaceful setting of Sunset Memorial Park.

Tranquility at the cemetery ‌On an early-September afternoon, a woman sat gazing at a headstone in the grass at Sunset Memorial Park, surrounded by loved ones who gave her some space.

Among them was a man throwing rocks into the Perrine Coulee. His eager yellow Labrador quickly followed each rock, diving into the murky water. Each time the dog resurfaced and returned to its owner, it carried a different rock than he threw.

The Perrine Coulee adds to the aesthetics of Sunset Memorial Park, connecting the living to a place where they lay their dead.

“I think the creek adds benefits in visible effects to the cemetery for sure,” General Manager Rod McMillen said. “A cemetery can be really peaceful.”

Several pretty bridges allow visitors to pass over the coulee, where headstones for beloved mothers, sisters, sons and veterans lay just feet from the water’s edge. Toys, pictures and flowers decorate the memorial benches scattered along the coulee’s bank. Also beside the babbling water, columbaria with cremation niches display tokens: a metal angel, a felt Christmas stocking, a pinwheel, a silk orchid.

People choose grave and bench plots near the coulee because of the peaceful surroundings, McMillen said, and quite

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People choose plots near the Perrine Coulee’s banks for graves and memorial benches because of the peaceful surroundings, a Sunset Memorial Park manager says. a few are still available.

Visitors who come to lay tokens for the dead often hear ducks quacking at a nearby pond. On occasion, deer and raccoons pass through the cemetery.

So far, 18,000 people are buried at Sunset Memorial.

“We have another 29 acres that’s ours that’s not been developed yet,” McMillen said.

For now, horses graze that land, once part of a large appaloosa ranch and one of the biggest indoor riding arenas in

the state, he said.

Sunset Memorial Park opened in 1937.

McMillen predicted owner Dignity Memorial will start planning development of the other portion soon, as plans must go through the city, state and Twin Falls Canal Co. The graves must be plotted a certain distance from the center of the coulee, and he expects another bridge across the coulee will be needed.

Once completed, he said, the cemetery will be the second largest in Idaho.

—Heather Kennison

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PART 2

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS

Tim Soran feeds ducks Sept. 9 next to the Perrine Coulee in his Twin Falls backyard. On the coulee’s opposite bank are the Lynwood Shopping Center’s parking lots and the backs of its commercial buildings.

COULEE CONFLICT Exploring the Perrine Coulee’s hidden route through Twin Falls The Perrine Coulee, a natural stream put to work more than a century ago as a farmland irrigation channel, is easy to overlook until flooding or tragedy demands attention.

But as it flows through the city that engulfed it, the Perrine Coulee dictates the shape of Twin Falls neighborhoods, enhances parks, irrigates school lawns and attracts wildlife. It complicates

commercial development and contributes sediments to the Snake River’s pollution problem.

And its dramatic plunge into the Snake River Canyon has been the backdrop for a classic photo setting since the tourists rode horses.

This is no ordinary ditch.

And living with it is no easy thing.

— Virginia Hutchins

Perrine Coulee in Twin Falls

About this project Today’s stories are the second installment in a three-part project by Enterprise Editor Virginia Hutchins and reporters Heather Kennison and Tetona Dunlap, exploring many of the ways the Perrine Coulee affects Twin Falls life as it flows through the city.

Watch for the third installDunlap Kennison ment Nov. 6, as the report- Hutchins ing moves downstream.

Among other topics that day, the reporting team will describe how farmers, college professors, birders, wildlife and tourists use the coulee.

Missed the first installment? Find it at Magicvalley.com/bigstory.

Also on Magicvalley.com, explore the Perrine Coulee’s route through Twin Falls with Digital Editor Matthew Gooch’s interactive tour, featuring videos and 360-degree images.

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Kat Wagner, Lee Enterprises

In some parts of Twin Falls, the Perrine Coulee winds through flat, grassy spaces with plenty of room on either side for access. It’s supposed to have this protected space, clear of development and obstacles, so Twin Falls Canal Co. can do the maintenance that prevents flooding and protects public safety.

A 1903 agreement with the state granted Twin Falls Canal Co. a 30-foot right of way from the water’s edge along the Perrine Coulee, and a 16-foot right of way along its laterals.

But in several areas of town, apartment buildings, garages and sheds stand just a few feet from the water’s edge. Some Twin Falls subdivisions were platted too close to the Perrine Coulee, and the right of way wasn’t protected, Twin Falls Canal Co. General Manager Brian Olmstead said.

This is particularly true in neighborhoods behind the LynOlmstead wood Shopping Center and south of Twin Falls

High School as the coulee runs from Heyburn Avenue East to Filer Avenue East, he said. Much of this encroachment happened during the 1960s.

The original state contract gave irrigation companies rights of way on only one side of a canal, he said, but court cases and statutes later granted it on both sides.

The problem, Olmstead said, is the agreement wasn’t always protected by city government and company officials.

“We kind of went to sleep for a while,” Olmstead said. “There were lots of rights of way that weren’t protected as well as they should have been.”

Why wasn’t the 1903 agreement honored?

For anyone who wasn’t working at the city during the 1960s, it’s difficult to say for sure. But City Engineer Jackie Fields believes several factors Fields came into play.

The city hasn’t always had

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Please see DEVELOPMENT, Page B2

MORE INSIDE: Storm of the century, B2 | The shift to pressurized irrigation, B3 | A city’s trash, B4 | The folly of crowding the coulee, B4

Sunday, October 30, 2016 | B2

Times-News

Coulee lullaby ‌Shirley Bolton grew up with the Perrine Coulee.

As a child, living with her parents near Amalgamated Sugar Co., she swam and fished in the cold water, and she fell asleep to the coulee’s gurgle. Now Bolton, 82, lives at the end of Poplar Avenue, and the water still lulls her to sleep at night.

“The coulee is very familiar to me,” Bolton said.

“I heard it at night as a kid, and I can hear it now.”

Bolton didn’t pick this home because it was next to the Perrine Coulee; that was just a happy accident.

The road dead-ends near her home because the Perrine Coulee cuts its way through the adjacent field, where thick

reed-like grass is taking over parts of a sagging chain-link fence.

The coulee flooded Bolton’s home two years ago, pushing 12 inches of water into the crawlspace below it. She had to have it pumped out.

She has lived in the home for 34 years and said 2014 was first time the water was up to the fence.

“It was a lake,” she said.

Water snakes from the coulee sometimes slither into her yard, and Bolton doesn’t like snakes. But for the most part, living next to the Perrine Coulee gives her a warm, good feeling.

“It reminds me of childhood memories.”

—Tetona Dunlap

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DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS FILE PHOTO‌

On Poplar Avenue, Cassandra Harding talks about her flooded basement Aug. 7, 2014, the day after the Perrine Coulee poured into a Poplar Avenue manhole.

Storm of the century ‌On Aug. 6, 2014, the storm of the century hit the Magic Valley, unleashing wind, rain and more rain onto the normally arid landscape.

“We’re getting hammered,” Twin Falls City Manager Travis Rothweiler said that day. “This is a low, slow-moving storm like a circle of hell.”

Fields flooded.

Streets flooded. And the Perrine Coulee, nature’s escape route for runoff, overflowed its banks,

sending floodwater into manholes and basements.

But this wasn’t normal runoff — this was rain that, during the night, overfilled the Twin Falls canal system, including Murtaugh Lake, 20 miles upstream from the coulee.

Twin Falls Canal Co. opened spillways and closed the laterals going into town that morning in an attempt to mitigate damages, but the flow of water was too

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great to stop.

The Perrine Coulee poured into a manhole at the end of the 1700 block of Poplar Avenue.

Residents on the block found sewage bubbling out of the basement shower drains and toilets.

Ducks, however, enjoyed the burgeoning coulee as it spread over lawns on the College of Southern Idaho campus.

The National Weather Service called the storm a 100-year event; Twin Falls saw 2.74 inches of rain in just 24 hours.

—Mychel Matthews COURTESY OF JOHN BOYER‌

John Boyer photographed deer near the Perrine Coulee south of Addison Avenue East earlier this year.

Wild backyards

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS‌

Vegetation behind a residential garage on Sigrid Avenue sits overgrown Sept. 30 because Twin Falls Canal Co. workers don’t have enough space to mow along the Perrine Coulee’s bank.

Development From B1

zoning codes to govern new subdivisions — and even after codes were established, some homeowners and businesses weren’t aware of them, Fields said. For years, subdivision plans commonly failed to show the Perrine Coulee easement, making it unclear to everyone involved — city officials, owners, contractors — where a building fell in relation to the right of way.

“What wasn’t clear was that there was a problem,” Fields said.

Of course, an easement exists whether it’s on the plans or not.

“Not everything works out the way it was supposed to,” Fields said. “The best I can do is change it from here on out.”

When the city created its building inspection department in 1942, little zoning was in place and little regulation occurred, Fields said. City codes at the time barely mentioned canals, and it fell to the city engineer to plan or map irrigation drainage systems.

Also, Fields said, the coulee shifted over time, drawing closer to development and shrinking space that once may have been accessible for canal company maintenance.

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Reporter Tetona Dunlap often takes out-of-state family and friends to the Perrine Coulee waterfall. She took visitors behind the waterfall twice this year and once got soaked by gusts blowing water everywhere.

When a 1975 state law required the city to create a comprehensive plan, Fields said, “we began to plan with a different kind of consciousness.”

LaMar Orton, who directed planning and zoning in the late 1970s, said the federal government also got proactive in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

“The federal government was pretty insistent on making sure floodplains were protected,” he said.

Now the city is proactive with regard to irrigation canal rights of way in new developments, Twin Falls Zoning and Development Manager Renee Carraway-Johnson said.

“We are very protective of the coulee and respect (the canal company’s) need to have the easement on the sides,” she said.

The company reviews plats for new developments and has a right to say how Carrawaymuch it needs Johnson protected, Fields said.

Twin Falls Canal Co. will settle for less than the 30 feet at times, depending on how often it needs to maintain that section of the coulee.

“Mainly we need what is rea-

sonable and necessary,” Olmstead said. “Reasonable and necessary in today’s equipment is at least 16 feet on either side.”

The company is more likely to compromise on smaller ditches, but on the Perrine Coulee it needs at least 16 feet clear of all obstacles.

It’s the canal company’s responsibility to approach property owners with concerns about access encroachment. At this point, Olmstead said, it’s no use crying over spilled milk; removing property in the right of way can require attorneys.

But the company keeps an eye on new developments, and sometimes the property owners initiate the conversation.

“We try to avoid mistakes made in the past,” Olmstead said.

St. Ignatius Orthodox Christian Church, which stands beside the coulee’s crossing of Addison Avenue East, flooded in recent years but has worked with the canal company to solve the problem. Planning to expand, the church purchased a nearby lot, removed an old house that was built within the coulee right of way and made the coulee accessible for maintenance.

“We kind of try to live and let live,” Olmstead said, “unless a flood happens.”

—Heather Kennison Photographer Pat Sutphin was surprised by the diversity of images for this project. “For a story about a coulee,” he said, “we really covered every aspect of this assignment with new and unique angles.”

‌Behind Morningside Elementary School, Lateral 39 splits off the Perrine Coulee, both heading north. From there, they snake under Ninth Avenue East and into a wide swath of open, undeveloped land between Maurice Street and Morningside Drive.

Often overlooked during its trip through Twin Falls, the Perrine Coulee is particularly mysterious here.

Some neighboring residents and business owners don’t know the Perrine Coulee by name, or know exactly why it’s there. Many greeted questions about the coulee with puzzled looks — even those who see signs of its presence from their backyards: deer, geese, squirrels, ducks and feral cats.

Levi and Nicole Shetler, who live at the west end of Spring Lane, said it’s neat to watch the bucks from their backyard when deer arrive in August.

“We didn’t expect it in the middle of town,” Nicole Shetler said.

Paul Treglown, a Twin Falls Canal Co. ditch rider who checks the coulee in the undeveloped area south of Addison Avenue East at least once a week, describes it as having both open space and lots of trees. Goats and horses graze on private property beside the coulee’s waters.

As they approach Addison, the coulee and Lateral 39 are still close together. When it’s hot outside, A Happy Camper owner Donna Arrington opens the back door of her shop to let in a breeze. Just beyond the fence outside, the lateral

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HEATHER KENNISON, TIMES-NEWS‌

Plastic bags attached to poles are intended to detract deer that might eat tomatoes in John Boyer’s garden south of Addison Avenue East. on John Boyer’s property is a popular venue for ducklings learning to swim.

“They’re fun,” Arrington said. “Sometimes, I’ll see 10 or 12 little babies.”

Boyer, who owns Boyer Jewelry next door, planted a garden behind his store, crossing the lateral on a small footbridge. His garden has often been a prime target for passing deer, which helped themselves to the tomatoes before Boyer attached flapping plastic bags to poles to detract them.

“They were very little bother to me this year,” he said.

None of the undeveloped land around this section of the coulee is public, but some people, apparently, can’t resist the lure of the open space south of St. Ignatius Orthodox Christian Church. Arrington and Boyer have seen people drive up and let their unleashed dogs out to run.

—Heather Kennison

HEATHER KENNISON, TIMES-NEWS‌

Boyer Jewelry owner John Boyer talks Oct. 5 about the vegetable garden behind his business. A lateral of the Perrine Coulee runs by the garden.

Sunday, October 30, 2016 | B3

Times-News

The disc monster

‌Mike Stradley has a love-hate relationship with the Perrine Coulee.

On one hand, its legacy of lost-and-found flying discs has bolstered his business. On the other hand, he has lost plenty of good discs to its murky waters.

The College of Southern Idaho’s Stradley fitness trail follows both sides of the Perrine Coulee as it winds through the campus. Between the water and the trail, grassy areas are spotted with trees, bushes, concrete tee pads and metal baskets for disc golf players.

“It adds a level of technicality to the course,” said Stradley, an avid disc golfer and owner of Disc Golf DC in the Turf Plaza across from CSI. Toward the back of his business, behind a counter, hundreds of colorful discs lie stacked and sorted. When a disc is recovered — from the coulee or elsewhere — Disc Golf DC provides a place where it can be stored and returned to its owner.

“The players bring them in,” Stradley said. “It’s a nice central location where you can drop ‘em off and pick ‘em up.”

Players often write their names and phone numbers on their discs — in case someone finds them later along the banks or while wading the murky waters fishing for their own lost discs.

As in regular golf, disc golf players want to complete each hole with the fewest possible throws. But beside the Perrine Coulee, a miscalculated throw

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS‌

The Perrine Coulee flows past a disc golf basket during sanctioned league play Sept. 22 at the College of Southern Idaho. could get them a penalty stroke and lose them $10 to $15 for the cost of the disc. Some tournament-stamped discs, Stradley said, are irreplaceable.

Visitors to Twin Falls have also lost discs in the coulee, as evidenced by Stradley’s meticulous sorting by name and state.

“They don’t really like that Perrine Coulee when they leave Twin Falls,” he said.

Stradley started his lost-and-found for stray discs at his previous workplace but made it official when he opened Disc Golf DC in 2012.

“Some of these I’ve had waiting here for four years,” he said.

He predicts his piles will diminish in winter, when he has more time to call the owners again.

On Aug. 30, Ben Hamblen walked in to return a disc he found, and he asked whether Stradley had any of his that were lost a couple of weeks earlier.

The business owner pointed to a row of unsorted discs, recently arrived, then moved over to look through his “H” pile.

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COURTESY OF CHANCE MUNNS, COLLEGE OF SOUTHERN IDAHO‌

The Perrine Coulee runs through the College of Southern Idaho campus and its disc golf course Oct. 6.

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS‌ PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS‌

A warning sign beside a headgate on the College of Southern Idaho campus reminds people it is illegal to obstruct the Perrine Coulee.

Hamblen immediately found one of his discs, recovered from the bushes where he’d lost it.

Then he said he’d “poke around” for a bit in the store.

Player Ted Koehn has waded the coulee to recover discs and has seen others do the same. He estimated he gets about one in 10 back from the coulee.

“Some years, we get a good share of it back,” Koehn said.

Behind the Idaho National Guard building on the CSI cam-

Disc golfers Brock Jensen, right, and Shawn Black participate in sanctioned league play Sept. 22 along the Perrine Coulee on the College of Southern Idaho campus.

pus, the coulee splits at headgates, where signs warn the area is under surveillance.

Usually, fallen discs go right through the headgates, often to be found farther downstream.

But about five years ago, Stradley said, somebody was cutting locks and shutting the headgates to collect discs when the water had drained. Farmers called Twin Falls Canal Co., upset when their irrigation water was suddenly cut off.

Stradley feared the canal company would ask CSI to shut down the disc golf course completely.

He advocated to keep it open, and the company instead installed the signs and better locks.

Players can fish out their stuck discs without wading in using the “golden retriever” device Stradley sells.

“They literally save me hundreds of dollars in lost plastic,” he said.

—Heather Kennison

The shift to pressurized irrigation ‌Facing high demand for potable water for landscaping 17 years ago, Twin Falls got proactive.

“We’d seen the writing on the wall, that we couldn’t sustain pumping the potable water we had,” Water Supply Supervisor Ryan Baumann said.

So in 1999, the city began requiring all new developments larger than two acres to use pressurized irrigation. Conservation efforts began in earnest in 2004, and the city later changed the pressurized irrigation requirement to include new developments three-quarters of an acre or more.

Today, Twin Falls’ 23 pressurized irrigation systems water about a third of the city. A dozen of those get water from laterals of the Perrine Coulee, irrigating homes, parks and businesses, Twin Falls Canal Co. watermaster Troy Jones said.

“We used over a billion gallons of irrigation water last year,” Twin Falls Water Superintendent Robert Bohling said.

While peak demand of potable water hit 33 million gallons a day in July 2003, thanks to conservation efforts and pressurized irrigation the city in recent years hasn’t reached 27 million gallons a day.

One of the pressurized irrigation systems starts at Twin Falls’ Episcopal Church of the Ascension. Developer Gerald Martens hooked his Stonehedge subdivision — near Filer Avenue East and Eastland Drive North — into that system in 2006. About a year later, Immanuel Lutheran Church and School next door also connected.

“It’s the right thing to do, and the cost of the water is less,” said Martens, head trustee for Immanuel Lutheran.

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Connor Lee, center, runs the ball past his classmates Oct. 12 at Immanuel Lutheran School in Twin Falls. The grass that the children play on is watered by pressurized irrigation from the Perrine Coulee.

The church hasn’t had any problems with the system and typically has all the water it needs, Martens said. “In spring, sometimes we wish the water would come on sooner.”

Likewise, some people want the city to turn off the water earlier than mid-October. The water department had received calls from people worried about freezing by the first week of October.

And pressurized irrigation isn’t without its issues.

Silt creates a problem for

some customers, often requiring them to clean filters weekly.

Sprinkler systems also need to be designed for less pressure, with fewer sprinkler heads in use at a time. Unlike the potable water system, pressurized irrigation isn’t designed for fire flow, Baumann said, so it doesn’t have as much pressure.

Supply also varies when more people are watering at once, so some households have had to change their watering times.

“It’s not a foolproof system,” Bohling said.

In the spring, the city has to bring water up slowly to avoid flooding everyone out, Baumann said. It can take two weeks to a month to equalize a pressurized irrigation system — until a storm hits or a headgate becomes clogged.

The city asks even-numbered addresses on pressurized irrigation systems to water on even-numbered days and odd-numbered ones to water on odd-numbered days. The time of day doesn’t matter for them, as it does for those watering landscapes with potable

water.

The city is starting to look at retrofitting areas where existing pressurized irrigation stations can handle more customers, Bohling said. Twin Falls may budget for projects when it updates its facility plan next year.

The city already spends about $600,000 a year to maintain its pressurized irrigation systems.

“It’s not really any cheaper,” Bohling said. “We’re just saving our good drinking water.”

—Heather Kennison

Sunday, October 30, 2016 | B4

Times-News

A city’s trash ‌It had been two days since Paul Treglown visited the Perrine Coulee across Caswell Avenue from Fred Meyer, where the water disappears into a culvert.

Treglown, 65, tries to stop by at least once a day. It’s his responsibility to keep the water flowing and the culvert’s screen clear of plastic bottles, yard waste and other trash.

“You don’t want it to build up too much,” said Treglown, a Twin Falls Canal Co. ditch rider for nine years.

On Sept. 6, he found the usual items — branches, a Starbucks cup with a green straw and some apples. No shopping carts or animal carcasses this time.

Treglown tried to pull up a big branch caught on one side of the metal gates by using a weed hook — a cross between a pitchfork and rake — but it slipped away.

“We’ll pick that up at CSI,” he said.

The next gate is on the College of Southern Idaho campus.

The branch that floated downstream is small compared with the railroad ties and sheets of plywood Treglown has fished out of the Perrine Coulee. Some

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PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS‌

Trash litters the Perrine Coulee on Aug. 18 behind the Lynwood Shopping Center.

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS‌

Ditch rider Paul Treglown uses a weed hook Sept. 6 to pull trash out of the Perrine Coulee across Caswell Avenue from Fred Meyer in Twin Falls.

Treglown is responsible for maintaining 25 spots along the coulee. of the largest items he has ever pulled out: an ATV and a six-person spa.

Canal water would soon be shut off, so Treglown hadn’t been pulling much debris from the waters — unless there was a major wind- or rainstorm. In April, when water is released for a new irrigation season, he pulls the coulee’s gates twice a day. On Sept. 6, he raked out the items caught in the screen near Fred Meyer and piled them on the shelf above the culvert.

In April, trash and debris are sometimes high as four feet on

that shelf.

“This is a main artery for my run on the Perrine Couleee,” he said.

Twin Falls Canal Co.’s adopta-canal program isn’t active anymore because the public’s interest waned over the years.

“We need local concerned people to spearhead the effort,” General Manager Brian Olmstead said. “We have thousands of miles of canals and we can’t target them all.”

If groups want to adopt the Perrine Coulee or another canal for trash cleanup, he said,

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS‌

Ditch rider Paul Treglown talks Sept. 6 about interesting items he has pulled out of the Perrine Coulee gate near Fred Meyer.

“You have ditch riders that they need to approach the canal haven’t fallen in,” Treglown company.

Has Treglown ever fallen into said, “and those waiting to fall the coulee while cleaning it? His in.”

—Tetona Dunlap answer: “Everybody falls in.”

Devoted to ducks ‌Tim Soran figures he’s been feeding ducks for three decades.

The Perrine Coulee, flowing between his Fremont Drive backyard and the Lynwood Shopping Center, has inched its way closer to his home over the past 42 years. Every March to October, Soran scatters corn daily outside his backyard fence for ducks floating or flying along the coulee.

He estimates he goes through ten 40-pound bags of corn each year.

It’s an attractive offering.

A decade ago, just outside the fence, Tim and Sandra Soran set up a couple of chairs and a birdhouse beside the coulee, where they enjoy watching the duck crowd in the evenings.

“We’re just passionate about ‘em since we’ve been here so long,” Sandra said.

Cars passing through the

Lynwood parking lot often slow down as their drivers notice the ducks, which take up residence beneath a Russian olive tree on hot days.

“I had 48 ducks last year,” Tim said. “I had ‘em eating out of my hand two years ago.”

This year, he saw as many as 38 at a time. And every season brings with it a new generation of young mallards flocking to the Sorans’ backyard, ducking beneath the back gate and drinking from their decorative ponds.

The couple, now in their 60s, moved into the home on Fremont Drive when Sandra was eight months pregnant. While their children were young, they let weeds grow up around the coulee and didn’t add a gate to the fence, for safety.

“About a year after they grad-

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Tim Soran feeds ducks a mixture of bread, cracked corn and sunflower seeds Sept. 9 next to the Perrine Coulee in his Twin Falls backyard. ‘I’ve seen a lot of them come and go, but they always come back,’ he says. uated, we actually put a gate back there so I could sit out in the chairs,” Tim said.

He doesn’t know if there have

ever been birds in the birdhouse — but certainly wasps and bees.

And he shot cellphone videos of enormous carp in the coulee.

“They come back every year,” Sandra said. “There’s crawdads in there, too.”

—Heather Kennison

The folly of crowding the coulee

COURTESY OF BRIAN OLMSTEAD‌

Storm runoff from the Perrine Coulee floods the Blue Lakes Mall in January 1979. ‌On Jan. 11, 1979, with the ground still frozen, heavy rain and melting snow inundated the Magic Valley, closing schools and roads, pouring into homes and stranding a Twin Falls couple in their car in a flooded underpass.

In the city, sewer lines backed up. Crews scrambled to clear out frozen storm drains and diverted water into canals that could carry it to Rock Creek and the Snake River. Developments throughout Twin Falls hadn’t incorporated stormwater retention, so parking lots shed their rainwater into the Perrine Coulee.

That day illustrated the folly of building too close to the coulee or, with pipes, restricting its ability to flood.

“In Twin Falls County, runoff from snowy hillsides proved too much for canals and laterals in Twin Falls and Castleford,” the Times-News reported the next morning. “Water choking a pipe on the Perrine Coulee spilled over into the Blue Lakes Shopping Center creating a lake in the parking lot and flooding several business (sic) in the new mall.”

Brian Olmstead has photos of that massive lake in his files. In one image, a school bus is stranded with water up to its axles.

“The pipe couldn’t hold it all, so it had to go through the mall,” the Twin Falls Canal Co. general manager said. Water flowed into the mall’s east end and out the west end. “I think they replaced every stitch of carpet in the whole Blue Lakes

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The Perrine Coulee exits a huge culvert beside Fillmore Street on the west side of Fred Meyer on Aug. 25.

Mall that year.”

Olmstead — who wasn’t at the canal company’s helm 37 years ago — doesn’t know whether the mall flood was purely a capacity problem or was exacerbated by debris on the pipe’s screen. But photos of the pipe’s downstream end show it running entirely full that day. Because of frozen ground and melting snow, he figures the coulee’s flow was at least twice as large as on Aug. 6, 2014, when the storm of the century hit the Magic Valley. But he doesn’t have numbers; the cou-

lee’s flow gauge can’t measure anywhere near that high.

Another January 1979 photo in Olmstead’s file illustrates his point about pipes. And his point about giving the coulee its space.

It’s a photo of the same day’s flooding, but on the College of Southern Idaho campus, where the overflowing coulee simply doused the frozen lawns and didn’t hurt anything.

“CSI still respects the right of way even today,” he said.

Wrecking machines demolished the Blue Lakes Mall in 1995

to make way for Fred Meyer, but a yawning culvert west of Blue Lakes Boulevard still takes the coulee under the asphalt. And it’s still the original half-circle arch pipe — other than a short section of replacement where a concrete footing was undermined at the pipe’s bottom end perhaps a decade ago.

“I’d say the pipe is still good for a lot of years,” said Olmstead, a tall man who can stand up straight while walking through it. “It’s in very, very good shape.”

—Virginia Hutchins

THE BIG STORY SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2016 |

magicvalley.com |

SECTION C

PART 3

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS

The Perrine Coulee flows through vegetation along the edge of the Canyon Springs Golf Course, then into Centennial Waterfront Park, on its way to join the Snake River on Aug. 25.

COULEE CHARISMA Exploring the Perrine Coulee’s hidden route through Twin Falls

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he Perrine Coulee, a natural stream put to work more than a century ago as a farmland irrigation channel, is easy to overlook until flooding or tragedy demands attention.

But as it flows through the city that engulfed it, the Perrine Coulee dictates the shape of Twin Falls neighborhoods, enhances parks, irrigates school lawns and attracts wildlife. It complicates commercial development and contributes sediments

to the Snake River’s pollution problem. And its dramatic plunge into the Snake River Canyon has been the backdrop for a classic photo setting since the tourists rode horses.

The waterfall is stunning, but the coulee has more subtle appeal, too — as a handy college laboratory, or a birder’s urban oasis, or a fantasy setting for a farmer’s grandchildren.

— Virginia Hutchins

Perrine Coulee in Twin Falls

About this project Today’s stories are the final installment in a three-part project

by Enterprise Editor Virginia Hutchins and reporters Heather Kennison and Tetona Dunlap, exploring Hutchins Kennison many of the ways the Perrine Coulee affects Twin Falls life as it flows through the city.

Dunlap

Missed the first two installments? Find them at Magicvalley.com/bigstory.

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Also on Magicvalley.com, explore the Perrine Coulee’s route through Twin Falls with Digital Editor Matthew Gooch’s interactive tour, featuring videos and 360-degree images.

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Kat Wagner, Lee Enterprises

Edna Palpa and her children walked down the Snake River Canyon grade Oct. 1 from Twin Falls’ visitor center to Centennial Waterfront Park — a walk they often take on weekends.

And though they live in Twin Falls, they still stopped to take a photo in front of the Perrine Coulee waterfall.

“It’s beautiful,” Palpa said.

“I actually drive from the other side of town.”

Since the early 1900s, people have been drawn to the coulee’s dramatic freefall, posing for photos on horseback or in automobiles.

The Twin Falls Public Library’s collection has 22 historical photos taken at the waterfall. Many were by early Twin Falls photographer Clarence E. Bisbee, reference librarian Jessica Tueller said.

A library wall displays a large reprint of a Bisbee photo of the coulee waterfall, frozen in place, and a vintage vehicle next to it.

“There are several taken during the winter, and that is one of the

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PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS

Debbie Campbell helps granddaughter Cassie Campbell up from a hiking trail Oct. 1 at the Perrine Coulee waterfall above Centennial Waterfront Park. more famous ones,” Tueller said.

It doesn’t have a date, but she guessed it was from the late teens or early ‘20s.

Today’s social media images prove the waterfall’s appeal hasn’t faded.

“A lot of people like to take pictures near it or beneath it,” Tueller said. “When it runs, it’s so dramatic.”

Early tourism promoters took note. Also in the library collection is a postcard of a man on a white horse beside the waterfall, used to advertise the Magic Valley.

MORE INSIDE: Irrigating farmland from coulee laterals, C2 | The coulee as college classroom, C2 | Stormwater retention rules, C4

Please see WATERFALL, Page C4

C2 | Sunday, November 6, 2016

THE BIG STORY

Times-News

Irrigating farmland ‌Ice blocks cut from a pool in the early 1900s. An ice rink in the 1950s. Today, a cold beer brewed from Twin Falls barley.

The Perrine Coulee has a long history of affecting people’s lives from land north of Pole Line Road that’s now part of David Detweiler Farms.

Third-generation farmer David Detweiler’s 600 acres are all fed by three laterals of the Perrine Coulee, including one that leaves the coulee on the College of Southern Idaho campus.

On the farm, the water makes its way through headgates to settling ponds and pressurized irrigation systems, where it is channeled into a sprinkler system for fields of corn, barley, hay and beans. In one field, pregnant heifers — and later, calves — drink from a lateral as it heads to cascade from a waterfall on the Snake River Canyon rim.

Detweiler’s farm uses only surface water, and all from the coulee.

“It’s pretty essential, as far as my business,” he said.

But it’s the pond nearest to his house that has perhaps the most interesting history. It was here, around 1914, that Twin Falls Feed & Ice harvested ice for cold storage, he said. Once fed by the Perrine Coulee year-round, the pond was also a popular winter destination for ice skaters.

When U.S. 93 was rerouted to Pole Line Road in 2011, the pond decreased in size by about a third.

Today it irrigates a portion of David Detweiler Farms and lawns.

A nearby treehouse and zip line provide recreation for Detweiler’s grandchildren. A wooden alligator and plastic boat contrast with the pressurized irrigation equipment nearby.

But the depth of this and other ponds varies throughout the summer. With the Perrine Coulee and its laterals, it’s often feast or famine, Detweiler said.

David Detweiler Farms is one of 40 shareholders of Perrine Coulee waters with more than 30 acres, Twin Falls Canal Co. General Manager Brian Olmstead said. There are also 200 shareholders with

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ABOVE: David Detweiler stands beside one of the settling ponds for a lateral of the Perrine Coulee on his farmland Sept. 30. The pump from this pond runs water to about 175 acres of farmland. LEFT: A treehouse, zip line and dock are evidence that an irrigation pond on David Detweiler Farms provides recreation for the farm family, too. The pond, fed by a lateral of the Perrine Coulee, once supplied ice for Twin Falls Feed & Ice. HEATHER KENNISON PHOTOS, TIMES-NEWS‌

said that in recent years he hasn’t had the trouble he used to.

What helps, he said, is having some of the oldest water rights along the system.

“If we’re short of water, we can’t complain because everyone else has run out,” Detweiler said.

Water doesn’t just get taken out, however. It gets dumped back into the Perrine Coulee and its laterals from irrigation and stormwater “Our biggest problem with the less than 30 acres, most of which are between 1 acre (homes) and 20 Perrine Coulee is it comes through runoff.

That’s why farmers like Detweiacres (ranchettes and hobby farms, town,” Detweiler said, “… and ler use settling ponds, so mud and for example). This doesn’t include we’re on the tail end of it.”

On some weekends, David Det- silt from upstream don’t clog the another 23 pressurized irrigation weiler Farms is short the water that irrigation system. systems for city subdivisions, the While headgate screens on DaCollege of Southern Idaho and five it needs. Detweiler believes people vid Detweiler Farms have caught tap in ditch pumps illegally but schools.

dead animals and even human body parts, the soil comes right through.

One group of ponds is maintained by the canal company and has to be dug out every couple of years, Detweiler said. He spreads that dirt on his own fields — though some of it likely originated from farms farther south.

Near these ponds lies a harvested field that earlier this year grew malting barley for MillerCoors. Dairies buy much of the hay and corn Detweiler grows for feeding cows.

“We’ve got some of the best fertile ground right here.”

—Heather Kennison

Coulee as classroom ‌On the College of Southern Idaho’s campus, the Perrine Coulee is more than just a pretty stream. It’s a natural feature that several professors use in their classes, giving students a hands-on experience without leaving campus.

Jeff Cooper, who teaches soil, environmental technology and water resources, took his class to the coulee Sept. 8 to measure the water’s velocity.

“We are so lucky to have it,” Cooper said.

“The utility for having this is very high. This stream, it’s wonderful.”

Student Kendra Price put on rubber boots and waded into the water to use a velocity meter. The rest of the class watched from the banks as Cooper lectured about the results of their experiment.

Biology professor Randy Smith watched from a small bridge over the coulee. He often uses the coulee where it flows into wetlands near the on-campus farm.

“We use it for introducing our students to water quality analysis,” Smith said. “And sometimes we use it to intro to macroinvertebrates.”

Smith’s students also measure the water’s clarity and temperature. They have found that the water is warmer as it flows into the wetlands and cooler as it leaves.

Last year, students measured noise levels in the wetlands and recorded the species of birds present, then compared their findings to two other sites.

Janice Simpkin, who teaches ecology and environmental science, takes her classes to the Perrine Coulee a few times each year.

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS‌ “We make use of the coulee and wetlands because it’s a fairly natural area that is really close Student Kendra Price uses a water velocity meter in the Perrine Coulee on the and easy to get to,” Simpkin said. afternoon of Sept. 8 at College of Southern Idaho.

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Digital Editor Matthew Gooch, who grew up just outside Twin Falls, never thought much about the Perrine Coulee until he was assigned to create a digital interactive for this project. “One of the things that surprised me the most,” he said, “is how much it surges when it rains.”

CHANCE MUNNS, COLLEGE OF SOUTHERN IDAHO‌

The Perrine Coulee flows through the College of Southern Idaho campus Oct. 6.

Ecology students use the area for experiments that look at vegetation decomposition; to learn to measure water quality such as dissolved oxygen, pH and turbidity; and to characterize streams by mapping the waterway. Environmental science students use the area as an example of a wetland habitat and to measure water-quality parameters. Students also learn how constructed wetlands are designed to help remove sediment and excess nutrients from the water before it returns to the Snake River.

“The beauty of having the coulee and the farm nearby is that we can get there and do our studies within a class period,” Simpkin said. “If we have to travel further, we obviously lose time in transit.”

Typically CSI’s environmental science classes are just 90 minutes long. The coulee’s size also makes it useful: big but not too big.

“It’s large enough to have water flow,” Simpkin said. “And the constructed wetland provides ponds that can be compared to the coulee. There are ponds and a big stream (Snake River) in the Auger Falls area, but that’s farther away, and the Snake River is obviously a lot larger and more difficult to work in than the Perrine Coulee.”

—Tetona Dunlap

“I have seen people jump over the Perrine Coulee, fall into it, poke and prod while studying it and take selfies behind it,” Chief Photographer Drew Nash said. “There is no doubt the coulee touches countless lives including my own.”

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THE BIG STORY

Times-News

Sunday, November 6, 2016 | C3

VIRGINIA HUTCHINS, TIMES-NEWS‌

Cindy Rapp looks for birds Aug. 17 at the College of Southern Idaho wetlands.

Urban oasis

‌The buzzing increased as soon as Randy Smith removed the top of the bee box.

Smith, a biology professor at the College of Southern Idaho, was dressed in a beekeeper’s suit Sept. 8 as he and three students sprinkled powdered sugar on the tiny bees in the box. Some bees flew away, while others walked across their hive coated in white dust.

Smith and his students were treating the bees for mites — which, if a bee were a person, would be about the size of a fist. When sprinkled with powdered sugar, the bees start to clean themselves and remove the mites in the process.

Don’t think bees have anything to DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS‌ do with the Perrine Coulee? These tiny insects might not be College of Southern Idaho professor Randy Smith talks Sept. 8 about the Perrine Coulee wetlands on here if it weren’t for campus that help stop sediment and nutrients flowing toward the Snake River. the water snaking through campus.

This spring the CSI Sustainability Council wanted to keep bees at the college. But where on a busy campus would they go?

“We thought it would be a great place with the farms,” Smith said. “The raspberries are loaded with bees.”

The CSI U-Pick Garden is on the college’s Breckenridge Endowment Farm on North College Road. On Sept. 8, sprinklers shot water from the Perrine Coulee across the crops.

Since the late 1990s, five ponds here ABOVE: Bees are doused with have slowed the Perrine Coulee’s flow powdered sugar near the Perrine and created an oasis for wildlife. The Coulee on Sept. 8. The sugar is wetlands are a cleaning mechanism meant to ward off mites that can to improve the quality of the water — decimate the hive. high in sediment and nutrients such as nitrates and phosphorus — before it LEFT: College of Southern Idaho enters the Snake River. student Anna Medina helps with The nutrient load drops off when filthe college’s beehive Sept. 8. tered through the wetlands’ five ponds.

Nitrates and phosphorus, which enDREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS‌ courage the growth of algae, occur naturally in the soil but are also found in fertilizer used at farms whose irrigation returns flow into the coulee.

The Perrine Coulee’s water is murky

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DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS‌

Cattails and bulrushes grow in the College of Southern Idaho wetlands Sept. 8. and filled with green, slimy weeds before it diverts near a trash collector that leads into the wetlands. The water quality starts to improve quickly as soon as it reaches the first pond filled with cattails and bulrushes, good at taking out nutrients.

Smith has seen goldfish, bass and bluegill in the waters. A sign tells anglers this area is catch and release only.

One time Smith spotted an osprey with a giant goldfish in its talons. A wildlife camera set up at the wetlands was removed two years ago, but not before it captured sightings of a fox, raccoons, porcupines and deer.

Smith remembers seeing lots of leopard frogs; you couldn’t walk around the pond banks without hearing them plop into the waters. As he walked Sept. 8, there were a few splashes, but he saw no leopard frogs. He suspects bullfrogs, which are predatory, might have pushed them out.

In spring and summer, you can also spot red-winged blackbirds and yellow-headed blackbirds here. In fact, a few Prairie Falcon Audubon members birding on the morning of Aug. 17 logged 20 species in a couple of hours.

—Tetona Dunlap

Then and now at the Lazy J

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‌The quiet community of Lazy J Ranch sits juxtaposed to endless Pole Line Road traffic.

But here, vehicles drive slowly on narrow roads that wind through the neighborhood of manufactured homes and carports. The babbling Perrine Coulee cuts through the 20-acre property’s well-kept lawns.

Lazy J leases a portion of the Wills property and was constructed in 1971, said Linda Wills, a partner in the 67-acre Sun West subdivision. Before that, the site was her father’s dairy farm. She remembers going down to the coulee to play as a child.

“It had lots of frogs,” she said.

“We used to go there to catch frogs.”

Once, when the coulee flooded, she said, “the canal company went in and just straightened it out.” A portion of it used to have a shape like a V. Wills also recalled a drowning of a young child who slipped and fell in.

Lazy J has always been a senior community, Wills said, and residents’ families come to visit, but no drowning has happened there since.

The smell of freshly cut grass was in the air Aug. 25 as groundskeeper Dale Hammond mowed near the

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coulee’s banks. Hammond doesn’t mind the coulee, but it does make his job more difficult.

The banks are so steep he can’t use a weed eater. And once when Hammond was mowing near the coulee, the bank started giving way.

He didn’t fall in, but the mower did.

He’s seen goldfish, bass and trout in the coulee. And in winter, the water is warmer than the air, which causes fog to gather over the coulee.

When Hammond was growing up, he and other children played in the Perrine Coulee all the time.

These days, he said, Lazy J Ranch residents are told to keep their young grandchildren from playing in the water.

—Tetona Dunlap and Heather Kennison

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS‌

The Perrine Coulee flows past several Lazy J Ranch homes Oct. 1.

THE BIG STORY

C4 | Sunday, November 6, 2016

Times-News

Stormwater retention rules

‌Most of Twin Falls’ runoff stormwater ends up in the Perrine Coulee — about 80 percent, Twin Falls Canal Co. watermaster Troy Jones estimated.

Big storms have flooded several areas of town along the coulee.

“I don’t know what you can do,” Jones said. “It is a natural drainage.”

The canal company already reduces irrigation flows during storms — the most effective measure to reduce flooding, he said.

Still, the major flooding in August 2014 would have been a lot worse had Twin Falls’ newer developments not had on-site stormwater retention, City Engineer Jackie Fields said.

“That took off the first 1.6 to 1.9 inches of what ended up being a 2.5inch storm,” Fields said. Without retention areas, “the damage would have been more extensive, and where there HEATHER KENNISON, TIMES-NEWS‌ was damage it would have been more intense.”

A stormwater retention pond behind Everton Mattress & Since 1995, the city has required all Furniture Gallery releases water onto the sidewalk Sept. 22. The new residential and commercial develstormwater eventually makes its way to the Perrine Coulee.

opments to have stormwater retention facilities such as ponds or infiltration trenches. When an existing development increases its impermeability through paving or buildings, it also has to account for the added stormwater runoff.

“We as a state were worried about our water quality in our rivers,” Fields said.

The city has some sand and grease interceptors to filter runoff entering the coulee.

And before reaching a population of 50,000, the size that will require a permit for stormwater discharge into the Snake River, the city signed the 1995 ordinance ultimately reducing the sediment load by reducing the stormwater draining into the Perrine Coulee.

In residential areas, a metered outlet releases water into a drainage system

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headed for the coulee. In commercial developments, the stormwater runoff has to be retained 100 percent and soaks into the ground naturally. These areas must be built to retain runoff from most, but not all, storms.

“They don’t have to hold onto Noah’s flood,” Fields said.

A 25-year storm — a storm that statistically would occur once every 25 years — would bring about 1.6 inches of precipitation to Twin Falls in 24 hours.

That’s what the retention areas must handle. The 2014 storm was even rarer than a 100-year storm, Fields said, so some retention areas overflowed.

Poplar Avenue and behind the Lynwood Shopping Center are two places particularly vulnerable to Perrine Coulee flooding. Homes there were built in low spots, Jones said, and suffer flooded basements and rotted fence posts.

In older areas of town without stormwater retention, the city encourages residents to keep ditches and drains clear.

—Heather Kennison

The park by the river ‌After the Perrine Coulee free-falls over the Snake River Canyon rim, it takes a gentle route through Centennial Waterfront Park before joining the Snake River.

A water-quality pond built by the Twin Falls Canal Co. 12 years ago helps filter the coulee’s water one last time before it streams past covered picnic tables and apple trees.

The pond also feeds the lawn watering system for Centennial Waterfront Park, where people can rent kayaks, grill burgers or fish from the riverbank.

Ken and Tanya Shawcroft of Hansville, Wash., didn’t notice the Perrine Coulee waterfall as they drove down into the canyon Oct. 24 to eat their lunch near the Snake River. It wasn’t until they sat under a picnic table’s awning that they heard the roar of distant water.

The Shawcrofts were on their way home from visiting family in Wisconsin and

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PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS‌

A Perrine Coulee pond reflects trees Oct. 1 at Centennial Waterfront Park in Twin Falls. stopped in Twin Falls because Tanya — who likes to knit while her husband drives — needed to buy yarn.

“The canyon is spectacular and really beautiful,” she said.

A narrow dirt trail runs beside the Perrine the coulee meets the river.

Before the Shawcrofts left the canyon, Coulee’s final stretch. Visitors here have to they planned to do what so many other viscrouch low to avoid spiderwebs overhead in the trees. From the bank, they can watch itors do: take a selfie at the coulee waterfall.

—Tetona Dunlap water skippers glide on the surface where

COURTESY OF TWIN FALLS PUBLIC LIBRARY‌

A historical image by early Twin Falls photographer Clarence E. Bisbee depicts a vehicle next to the frozen Perrine Coulee waterfall.

Waterfall

“People are always saying how amazing the (Shoshone) Falls are,” Tueller said. “The Perrine CouFrom C1 lee, I think, it’s kind of more of a thing you know about when you And author Vardis Fisher inare local. I’m a transplant myself, cluded a full-page photo of the coulee falls in a 1937 promotional and I never heard about it before I started working at the library.” guide to Idaho.

On Oct. 1, Palpa snapped a selIn the early 20th century, Blue fie with her son from the coulee Lakes Boulevard ran under the Perrine Coulee waterfall. In a 2012 waterfall’s overlook before con“Hidden History” column, Cleone tinuing down the grade. Now that Palpa has children, she doesn’t Arrington recalled her mother’s stories of riding in a wagon under climb down the rocky trail to the waterfall’s base. the falls. The horses would get PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS‌ “I don’t go much with kids,” skittish when they approached the water and refuse to go any farther. Palpa said. “It’s slippery and I’m TOP: Birds fly past the Perrine Coulee’s dramatic waterfall as it plunges over the Snake River Canyon rim Aug. afraid they’ll get hurt.”

The canyon road later was re25. BOTTOM: Inside the Snake River Canyon, water splashes against the rocks at the base of the Perrine Coulee routed to avoid the waterfall.

—Tetona Dunlap waterfall Oct. 1.

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