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Friday, Jun. 13, 2008
Break in canal floods Prosser Cemetery
By Franny White, Herald staff writer
PROSSER -- Workers are filling in sunken holes at the Prosser Cemetery after a break in a nearby irrigation canal sent water rushing across the century-old burial grounds.
The spill last week caused the ground above 10 burial spots of older wooden caskets to sink a few inches to two feet, said cemetery superintendent Tim Stewart. The ground above newer plots with cement-lined caskets did not sink.
Though dirt and rock debris still litter portions of the burial grounds, cemetery Treasurer John Koening said the damage could have been a lot worse.
"We're lucky, as far as nothing toppled," Koening said of gravestones. And no graves were opened or otherwise disturbed by the spill.
Water rushed over the cemetery's oldest grave, the 1901 plot of 6-year-old May Mathews, but the ground didn't sink, Stewart said.
Workers started filling the holes with dirt Wednesday and Stewart expects the work to last about 10 days. Sod will be placed on top of the new soil and some gravestones will have to be leveled with the ground.
The spill was caused by a break in an earthen canal of the Sunnyside Valley Irrigation District. District Manager Jim Trull believes a gopher may have made the hole, which he said caused about 8,550 gallons of water per second to spill for about two hours.
After running through a long swath of the cemetery, the canal water spilled onto Paterson Road and partially flooded one home and Prosser High School's athletic facility. The irrigation district's insurance company still is gathering information and no damage estimate was available Thursday.
The irrigation district's same Prosser West Lateral Canal also broke last summer and spilled into the cemetery. The cemetery is asking the district to consider lining the canal with concrete or enclosing it with tubing, though Trull said that work is expensive.
The recent spill is nowhere near as bad as one in 1964. A warm Chinook wind melted 18 inches of snow, causing an already full irrigation canal to break back. The cemetery had to fill in 300 graves that time, Stewart said.
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