Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

The third day of the water-catchment build story finds us back in Spring Creek Basin with the full team. Daniel used the excavator to widen the holes for the tanks, and the other guys used shoves and rakes to clean out the crumbly bits (into the excavator’s bucket). Then the holes were primed – literally – for the dumping and aligning of the tanks.

Let’s get to work!

Daniel had already combined the two middle holes to one and is cleaning out more dirt, and Jim checked the depth.

Mike and Jim took a quick check of the depth of the hole (and this image gives readers a better look at the ingress/egress ramp).

Mike and Jim had to get in the hole to do some finesse digging of the sandy dirt crumblies. By this time, the dirt was approaching the consistency of powder. (I’m not sure whether I’ve ever mentioned on this blog, but it’s dry out there … !)

In addition to cleaning out the holes, Mike and Garth checked the level of the bottom to make sure it was prepared for the tanks to sit level right when they went in the holes.

Lots of dust is created by powdery dirt when a 3,500-gallon water tank drops over the edge after four brawny guys push it into a hole! Don’t worry, the tank won’t sit like that. This is a capture of a split second before the tank rocked back to flat on its base.

While Garth took over the controls of the excavator, Daniel and Jim were in the hole to do some fine digging.

The guys had to roll the tanks from where we’d off-loaded them from the flatbed to the edge of the hole, then maneuver them to topple into the hole (this is the middle hole, with one tank already in it), in a controlled manner so the valves faced forward.

More fine work from Mike, Garth and Jim. …

This is one of my favorite pix of the whole project so far. All our BLM guys, working together for the benefit of our Spring Creek Basin mustangs. 🙂 Priceless.

When the tanks were all placed in the ground, it was time to dig the trench for the pipe.

Daniel and Jim were all over the putting together of the valves for each of the tanks. Those went in place by the end of the day …

… helped by Mike, using (I think) Daniel’s grandpa’s aluminum wrench!

Thursday: last work day (because of Friday’s rain), on which the pipes were attached to the valves, and each other, and down to the eventual location of the trough.

If you missed yesterday’s post, a brief recap: I’m telling the story of the first phase of the building of the first of Spring Creek Basin’s two new water catchments. In this first phase, don’t think building UP so much as digging DOWN (the up-ness will come in phase 2). There were some holes to dig before the pretty stuff – the water tanks – could be placed, and the tanks had to be placed before the moisture-gathering roof can be built.

Day 2 started with more digging of the holes. Though they measured side to side and other side to other side, to contain the roundness of the big tanks, because of the crumbliness (that’s a highly technical term in the world of dirt-hole digging) of the dry dirt, they really had to overdig, and the middle two holes eventually became one rectangular hole. Daniel is at the controls of the mini-ex, and Jim has the laser level “stick.” (For the first half of this day, Mike was meeting another group at another range site, and Garth had the day off to attend the graduation of his kindergartner!)

In the afternoon, Mike arrived with Tres Rios Field Office Manager Connie Clementson and BLM employee Whitney Carnahan (I knew her when she was a seasonal and don’t know her married name) to show off and explain the project. Daniel and Jim were just about to use the excavator to pick up the first water tank and lower it into the first hole.

Daniel and Jim finagled a way to strap the tank through the holes in the top in order to lift it with the excavator. Destination: hole in the foreground.

Once again, we had Jim in the hole (inside joke) while he steadied the tank and Mike directed Daniel. Jim’s left hand is on the lower valve opening, and straight above that is the top valve opening. There’s a much bigger hole on top of the tank (which has a screw-top lid), and those were the holes the guys used to run the strap through and lift the big bugger. Those valves also had to “face front” to align with the pipe-’em-all-together pipe that would run across the “front” of the tanks, then down to the trough.

Because of the off-center location of the top holes, though, it was hard to get the trough quite settled in the hole.

This was kinda when they realized the holes needed to be a wee bit bigger to accommodate the dirt crumbliness. I also want to point out Daniel at lower right: he dug little entrance/exit ramps into the holes for easy(er) access. As it turned out, he ended up digging the holes out a fair bit bigger for really good access, which they needed in order to align the tanks with the valve holes in the right spots after they dropped the tanks into the holes.

Tomorrow (which is to say that day’s tomorrow), they used the UTV to drag out the tank to enlarge the hole (along with the other holes) and commenced the dropping of the tanks!

First, let me refresh your collective memories:

Last year, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area herd manager (and all-around great guy) Mike Jensen put the finishing touches on the new, updated herd management area plan (updated from 1994!) that he worked on for two years. If you follow that time-machine link back to July 2020, you’ll see that Tres Rios Field Office Manager Connie Clementson’s decision included eight items. No. 8 was to authorize “additional new water developments for improving wild horse distribution across the HMA.”

We had hoped to start the first catchment last fall, but Mother Nature had other ideas for the week Mike had rented the machine to do the digging. And as winter approached, the project got pushed to this spring.

Fast forward to this spring (which was two weeks ago!), our BLM dream-range-team of Mike, Garth Nelson (also a rangeland management specialist), Daniel Chavez (range tech) and seasonal weed sprayer Jim Cisco broke ground on phase 1 of the first of two new water catchments in Spring Creek Basin.

This week on the blog will be devoted to the progression of the project. So today’s photos depict that Monday’s work; Tuesday’s post will depict that Tuesday’s work, etc.

On to the dirt work!

Daniel, the youngest of our range team, ran the mini excavator to dig holes for four 3,500-gallon poly (heavy plastic) water tanks while Mike and Garth used an augur to drill holes for the support posts for the roof system that will go over the tanks to catch rainwater and snow.

While the digging was under way, Jim readied the laser level in order to ensure the holes are all at the same depth. Then he used it to measure the run down to the eventual location of the water trough. That laser level got a workout (as did Jim) during the week. Garth would give Daniel breaks from running the mini-ex. Like Daniel said, it was a bit dizzying to scoop (to dig) and swing (to deposit). Here’s a sad thing: They dug down about 4 feet to bury the tanks about halfway, and the dirt is dry, dry, dry, all the way down.

Here’s a closeup of Garth and Mike using an augur to drill holes for the support posts for the roof over the tanks.

As it turned out, they decided on different locations for the posts to stand, but these first holes gave us the straight line on which to align the tank holes. Another sad note: Garth later used a post-hole digger to clean out the holes … and the dirt was SO dry, it all just slid right out of the digger’s “jaws.” (Also of note, of all tools in existence, I despise post-hole diggers the most!)

Did I mention the laser level? They used it to ensure that all the tanks were buried to the same depth and were level, and they also had to make sure there was enough “drop” down the slope (which doesn’t look like much of a slope, does it?) so gravity will do the work of allowing water to flow from the tanks (even when the water level is low) to the trough. As with our other two troughs, there will be a float to keep the water level constant. And the guys also will add an evaporation cover. In the pic is Jim, master of the laser level.

Zoom in on this pic. See Mike? See Mike smiling? He’s measuring out the distance from the tanks to the trough location. Mike is always smiling! 🙂

Mark it! This will be the basic location of the trough, and this perspective is looking back up toward the tanks. You can see the first one that we delivered on the flatbed trailer behind it. Also, see the white thing behind the truck cab? That’s a 200-gallon water tank (the truck is Jim’s weed-spraying rig), and the guys filled it with water each day before they left Dolores, and each day, we emptied it to one of the aprons at the main (and original) catchment, for a total of 800 gallons! (Friday, Ma Nature graced us with rain, so there was no work that day, and she provided the water!)

Tomorrow: A bit more digging, a bit more leveling, and the holes will be ready for the tanks!

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Also today, Memorial Day, we remember all those members of the U.S. Armed Forces who died in service to their country. Though they did not make it home to family and loved ones, their service and sacrifice cannot be forgotten by those of us *at* home, for whom they fought and died.