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Floods and atmospheric rivers leave irrigation water dirtier for seasons to come. Here's how to protect your filters, pumps, and emitters before next year's water turns on.
When rivers, canals, and ditches flood across farmland, they pick up everything in their path—soil, sand, organics, manure, fertilizers, and debris. Once waters recede, a lot of that material settles into:
The result is irrigation water that is:
You may not feel all of it today—but when you start up irrigation in spring, your suction screens, filters, and emitters will.
Suction screens on rivers and canals plugging more often
Filters going from "weekly rinse" to "daily or multiple-times-a-day"
Higher pressure loss across filters even when they appear clean
Emitters and nozzles plugging sooner in the season
If you had marginal filtration before, flood-driven dirty water will push it over the edge. The good news: the off-season is the best time to inspect, clean, and upgrade before you're fighting problems in the heat of irrigation season.
Our team can review your current suction screen and filter configuration, then recommend adjustments tailored to the dirtier water conditions you'll see after major flood years.
Pull and inspect suction screens, pump intakes, and pond inlets. Look for dents, coating loss, heavy fouling, and signs of bypassing.
Don't just backflush—open housings, inspect screens/elements, and check for accumulated fines and damage.
If you were barely keeping up before, this is the time to increase screen area, add self-cleaning, or add a pre-filter stage.
Even a simple inspection and small upgrade now can save you hundreds of labor hours and thousands in crop damage later.
Whether you farm in the Yakima Valley, the Skagit and Snohomish valleys, or another flood-prone region, the principles are the same: flood years change how hard your intakes and filters have to work.
If you're not sure how to size or configure filtration for the next few seasons of dirty water, we're happy to talk it through and offer practical options.
We prioritize flood and dirty-water irrigation questions and typically return calls within one business day.
Interested in how water chemistry and pH tie into all this?
Learn about sulfur burners for irrigation water