SAN JUAN COUNTY, N.M. — The 2024 irrigation season is starting, and San Juan County officials want to remind people to be cautious near acequias.

“Roughly I think there are about 30 ditches off the Animas River alone, and it’s the lifeblood for a lot of people,” said Randy Lydic, the president of Aztec Ditch. “Ditches are just dangerous, any way you look at them. You put kids and water together and they think they need to play. If kids want to play in water, they need to go to the swimming pool.”

In San Juan County and across New Mexico, some ditches can run as deep as a swimming pool. A lot of ditches have siphons or a large tube that sucks running water underground.

“And if somebody was to fall in there I don’t know if you can hold your breath for five minutes by the time they pop out of the other side or there could be in the siphon that traps somebody”, Lydic said.

The water flowing through these ditches isn’t clean drinking water.

“It’s got bacteria in it, it may have run off fertilizer, and if people have a pasture next to it we know what else is going to end up in it – the output of cows”, Lydic said.

It’s not just the water that’s dangerous when acequias are running. The easement roads next to them can be troublesome.

“You put kids together with four-wheelers and motorcycles and they see a nice straight road you know that’s what they call an attractive nuisance. The last thing we want to have is some child fall in our ditch and not come home at night”, Lydic said.