TID History: A Kids’ Version

Over 100 years ago, a Ceres farmer named Henry Stirring opened a channel and let water from an irrigation canal flow onto his newly planted corn crop. It was a very big occasion. He was the first farmer in California to receive water in this manner from an irrigation company. That irrigation company was the Turlock Irrigation District (TID). TID delivers water to farmers who grow crops on land in Merced and Stanislaus counties that lies between the Merced and Tuolumne Rivers in the north and south and from the foothills on the east to the San Joaquin River on the west.*

The first thing TID did to get the water the farmers needed was build a dam on the Tuolumne River near the little town of La Grange. TID built La Grange Dam in partnership with its neighbor to the north, the Modesto Irrigation District. It was finished in 1893. The purpose of the dam was to lift the water out of the river into irrigation canals each of the districts built to carry it to their farmers.

This new irrigation system made it possible for this part of Central Valley of California to become one of best places to grow all kinds of crops*. The valley gets rain mainly from late winter through spring and so before the irrigation system was in place, the only thing farmers could plant were wheat, grain and other crops that could sustain long periods of dry weather. But by storing water from the rains and melting snow in the winter and spring, the districts could release water into their canals in the summer when farmers need it to grow a variety of different crops. The canal* system is gravity-fed, which means the water flows from our storage reservoirs downhill in the canals to farmers whose land does not border the river. Because of this system, farmers in Stanislaus County now grow over 250 different kinds of crops from almonds to zucchini.

Because we needed more water for the farmers, TID and MID joined forces again in the 1920s and built the original Don Pedro Dam upstream from La Grange in order to store water for a full irrigation season. When we started storing water to deliver to farmers, we also found something else we could do for the community – provide electricity. With the dam came the opportunity to make electricity with water, using the flow of water through the dam to turn a turbine* and generator* to make electricity. The people who lived in the Turlock Irrigation District service area voted in 1923 to keep the power and use it themselves instead of selling it to companies who were in the electric business. This made TID the first irrigation district to also sell electricity directly to its customers.

After a few dry years, when there wasn’t a lot of rain or snow, the districts decided to build a much larger dam to replace the first Don Pedro Dam so it could store more water than before. New Don Pedro Dam was completed in 1971. With a capacity of 2 million acre-feet of water, it held six times more water than the first reservoir. Besides storing water and generating electricity, Don Pedro Lake is a great place to boat, ski and camp with family and friends.

TID now serves electricity to a population of approximately 220,000 people in northern Merced County and Southern Stanislaus County* and small sections of Tuolumne and Mariposa counties. We deliver electricity to customers who live and work in Turlock, Ceres, La Grange, South Modesto, Patterson, Crows Landing, Hilmar, Keyes, Denair, Hughson, Delhi, Ballico, Hickman and Diablo Grande.*

As the valley grew and more people needed more electricity, TID had to find other ways to make electricity because Don Pedro couldn’t generate enough electricity for all of its customers at that time. In the 1970s, TID began studying building other kinds of power plants and buying electricity from other companies to provide the electricity its growing number of customers needed.

In the late1970s, TID built the first of eight small hydroelectric* plants on its canal system and those for two nearby irrigation districts. About this time, TID also acquired an interest in a geothermal* power plant in the Geysers Steam Field in Lake County, which is located in Northern California.

The District built its first fossil fuel* power plant near Turlock in 1986. A second natural gas-fired* power plant also capable of generating about 50 megawatts* of power was completed in 1995. A third fossil fuel plant, the Walnut Energy Center, went into service in early 2006 with a generating capacity of 250 megawatts.

Today, the District can generate a little more than 505 megawatts of electricity with all of its power plants.* This generation ability now allows TID to sell electricity on the open market, which means other electric companies can buy power from TID if they need it.

Gravity is the natural force that pulls things down from higher places to lower places. The lowest points on the earth are the oceans. Water always moves from high in the mountains down toward the oceans. Luckily, we are between a mountain source of water and a river that takes water to the oceans, so we borrow the water from that system and let it flow down through our canals to farmers. The Tuolumne River is the District’s primary source of water, replenished yearly by the spring snowmelt from mountains in Yosemite National Park.*

* Refer to glossary for definitions.