Oasis without electric lines

Well, for the first time in the fifteen year history of my oasis it isn't bordered on its south side by electric lines. (Clicking on this image may make it easier to visualize.)

Basically the pole you see in the foreground (with the nest box attached) is where one of the old electric poles stood. It's still there, but they cut it off for me (and us squeaky-wheeled Texbirders) above the nest box and put the new wires on the line of poles you see in the background. I'm looking south here and the line is running east to west. So it's farther away from my oasis now, which is important in several ways. For one thing, they would have had to bulldoze a road down the old right-of-way to be able to install the heavier electric cables they're upgrading to. That would have destroyed my precious dike, not to mention the habitat created by the dike. Plus that road would be used whenever they needed it... a huge blow to the ambience of my oasis, as just the road's presence would have been. You may wonder why they agreed to do this. Mostly because when I built the dike years ago I visited their Alpine office and asked how wide their right-of-way was. It's fifteen feet on either side of the pole, ie. 30 feet. So I measured them off that distance. But it turns out that distance was determined 40 years ago. Today their big equipment can't maneuver in that amount of space, in other words, within their right-of-way. I was prepared to fight for every inch that they didn't have a right to, or give them the space they wanted in a more convenient place for both of us. It actually shortens the distance of their line quite a bit. Apparently (?), they need corners here and there for strength and when the line was originally installed they put in a huge "big bend"... way more than was necessary. That corner was down beside the arroyo, which is the only place I could build diversion dams, and they often got stuck there in summer storms, which is the very time lines are likely to go down. So this is good for both of us, but it seemed to take an act of congress to get it changed.

They cut off several more old poles, too. I'm going to replant the cut-off tops of them the first chance I get. That will give the Elf Owls, Ash-throated Flycatchers, and Ladder-backed Woodpeckers even more nesting options.

Meanwhile, I'm still cleaning out one of my two storage tanks. As you can see from the above photo that tank won't be ready to clean out for a while. At least I hope so, as that's my irrigation water until it rains again.  Currently there's about 7 feet of water in it. In good years it doesn't get cleaned out because it rains before it gets low enough. On years it gets really low before a rain, I pump what's left of it into the tank I'm now cleaning. And ration water to my oasis accordingly as I clean out the above tank. I have to transfer my gambusias (mosquito fish) too, which is a real chore. After about the first million I just leave the rest and hope birds will get them. Right now, in the tank I'm cleaning there's a puddle of murky green water in the bottom  with dying gambusias in it. I took out all I could catch with my net. They reproduce  really prolifically in the summer and since the water in the full tank will keep going down, it's got about all the gambusias it can support in it.

It's hard to tell what's what on the below photo. My shadow in early morning light stands out as I'm positioned on the south wall looking down into the tank. The top 3 feet of the wall are above the height of the spillway. It had to be that way due to the terrain. So, althought the tank on the south end is 15 foot deep, it only holds 12 feet of water.  In a huge flash flood like the one I had in 2000 it filled the whole 15 feet, but of course when the water level in the arroyo that was flooding went down it flowed from the tank until it was  contained at the level of the spillway. It's an engineering marvel to behold during a big flood. Those tanks can fill up in a matter of minutes.

At the spillway, far right, mostly off the frame, the tank level holds 8 foot of water. That's due to impenetrable bedrock that our equipment couldn't dig when we built the tank. I've patched the tank again this year, as I do every year, and I think it's sealed good. Around that puddle of water is mud. Since I carry all the silt up a 15 foot ramp in 5 gallon buckets, and since I'm 70 years old, I wait for the mud to dry before I remove it. It's much lighter that way. This year the silt is only an inch or two deep so I'm about two-thirds through the project. And there's no hurry. I prefer to do it before the weather gets too hot, like it can in March and April. In previous posts I've posted photos of this tank when it's full.