Irrigation Water In Placer County: NID and PCWA

If you live in a city where water is piped in to your property and seems to have a never ending supply, the concept of a well or irrigation water can seem very foreign. Most country homes that do not have access to treated city water rely on a well for their household water supply.

Depending on the well, some home owners may be able to irrigate a small yard with well water.  This can be expensive though, because it can take a lot of electricity to pump enough water from the well. This can also lead to a well drying up prematurely. Irrigating a large parcel of land or a pasture is not usually feasible with a well.

So where do you get water for irrigation? The answer is irrigation canals. Throughout Placer County, NID (Nevada Irrigation District) and PCWA (Placer County Water Association) have a system of canals that carry water from the streams, rivers and lakes of the Sierras to the lower areas of Placer County.

This system of canals operates as a much cheaper and more reliable way to irrigate large parcels of land.

Having access to these canals is a great benefit for country properties and can open up uses to a property that would otherwise be impossible. The uses include, but are not limited to, being able to have a large lawn, farming, maintaining pasture land or having a pond. Having access to an irrigation canal can raise the value of property, because it increases the number of uses for the property and it lowers the cost of maintaining the property.

Most properties that have access to these canals will indicate so in the MLS details. It is important for buyers to confirm this access, as proximity to a canal does not guarantee that there is water available from it. This is especially important to verify on vacant land that is not already using water from a canal.

If you are considering buying a country home or lot in Placer County and you would like to confirm if it has access to a canal or if you are just curious to learn more about the canal system and its history, please visit our Placer County Building Resources page and click on the links that we have provided to the PCWA and NID websites. If you are interested in searching for homes or land in Placer County, click Placer County homes and land for sale.

Comments

[Kathy Shoemaker]

Kathy Shoemaker Says:

Your web site uses the word Pastier instead of Pasture in regards to irrigation water in several places. The meaning of Pastier is:

2 dictionary results for: pastier
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
past·y1 /ˈpeɪsti/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[pey-stee] adjective, past·i·er, past·i·est, noun, plural past·ies.

–adjective 1. of or like paste in consistency, texture, color, etc.
–noun 2. pasties, a pair of small, cuplike coverings for the nipples of a striptease dancer, nude model, etc.

You might want to correct the spelling.

[Patrick Hake]

Patrick Hake Says:

Kathy,

I have made the corrections you suggested.

Thank you for taking time out of your day to provide useful feedback.

Unfortunately, spell check does not catch the incorrect use of homonyms, such as pasture and pastier.

:)

[Mikael]

Mikael Says:

Makes you wonder how Kathy knows about pastiers?! A former career? And she tries to hide it by positng the definition from the dictionary! Nice try, Kathy, but we all know what you have done for a living! Instead of being smart about it, all you had to say was you mispelled pasture. We didn't need the definition nor the image in our head!!!

[Nick Canepa]

Nick Canepa Says:

Obviously a Liberal.