Percha Dam | Hatch Green Chile Update

So this is Randy with the Fresh Chile Company. And we are at Percha Dam, where you can see the water is really flowing now. And these guys are here from Elephant Butte Irrigation District, and they are shutting the dam right here. You can see maybe, maybe you can see it. I don't know if you can, but this dam is slowly going down. You can hear it, probably this motor. You can see it barely turning. And the dam is slowly going to go down. So they're going to close it here. And so that this water will back up and probably just barely go over the spillway there. And they're going to get ready to shut that one over there as well. You can see slowly, but surely, it's going down. And then they will divert the water to here, which is going to this is going to take the water into the canal system that goes through Garfield and Hatch to your chile. And so they opened it up at Caballo Lake up by those mountains this morning at 6:00 AM. They turned it up to 1000 CFM, which is just now starting to get here. They're going to shut it back down to 200 cubic feet per minute because all they're going to turn on right now is the hatch irrigation district. And then they'll come back here on the 12th, and they'll open this back up, which I'll try to see if we can come back up here and film as well. The water is really going underneath this.

They'll open this back up on the 12th, and this river will start flowing. This is the Rio Grande River, and it'll start flowing all the way down to Las Cruces and El Paso and on down into Mexico. But for now and today, they're going to close it here at Percha Dam and divert all of this water into the hatch irrigation canals. So they're closing these. I'll go back over there and show you. But they're closing the dam right now. You can hear it. So this water will start backing up, and then they'll open these gates right there that you see. And the water will start going into this canal here and down into the hatch irrigation canals and irrigation system. Well, let's see if we can. You can see he's getting; he's got it going down pretty close. I was standing in the last video I took. I was standing right there. And I told you I couldn't stand there for another hour. Well, it was another ten minutes. So slowly but surely, this thing is going down. I guess they just lit this on fire. Burn off all of this stuff. How'd you guys light that? Just through a match. Yeah. Wow. Boom. It burns all that up so that it doesn't get into the irrigation system down below. Ooh, it's hot. These guys are down here. Yeah, it is hot. I'm going to have to move. Wow. Whoa. That guys. Are you okay? Oh, look at the flames coming up here. You got fire over here, and you got water over here.

Ha ha ha. His coffee cup is melting. So this is slowly going down, and it's about to close. And then they'll close the other one. And when they've got them all closed, this will build up with water, and they'll open the, the dam, the gates below me here, um, to send the water this way. Have a great day, and eat more chile. We got water, which means we will have chile.

Back to blog

Leave a comment

Please note, comments need to be approved before they are published.