4/6/2005

I asked Mr. Like to do whatever was possible to restore the livestock spring as we have cattle coming in around the first of May. This one spring is a major part of the history of this area. It has never gone dry, even in the worst of drought years. It was important to the earliest Native American residents of this area as evident by artifacts found on the nearby Loess mound. It was developed with metal pipes into a section of riveted boiler section for a tank by the Kinneys. I updated this spring with a USDA grant in 1977 with a concrete cattle tank that holds over 700 gallons of water. I had dug out under the cave and installed gravel, vitreous clay pipe and a sediment tank to feed into the large concrete cattle tank by an underground pipe. The overflow went into the head of the valley and hydrated the wetland that was determined by USDA. The wetland is on the north side of the 200 foot Loess mound.

Floyd Simpson

4/8/2005 - 4/9/2005

Mr. Luke contacted QES to try to re-establish the spring. There was a 2 gallon per minute flow of water (right after last weeks 2 inch rainfall). QES diverted the flow to work on the system. On Saturday the flow ceased. Work continued and a new collection tank was put into the old 4” vitreous clay pipe I had installed in 1977. They also re-plumbed the underground pipe to the concrete cattle tank.

Floyd Simpson

4/10/2005

Sunday, I photographed the nice system QES put in, but there is no water flow into the tank. They did a very good job on it, but they could not squeeze any water out of it. I checked the wetland and it seem to be damp but not wet like a typical wetland.

Floyd Simpson

4/24/2005

There is still no water flow in the historic spring.

Floyd Simpson