By JAYSON JACOBY

Of the Baker City Herald

The calf-deep mud remains, blatant as a splash of brown paint on a new white sheet.

What’s not so obvious is who will pay to clean the sticky mess.

Or to repair the breached Smith Ditch.

A 75-foot-wide section of the irrigation ditch collapsed Saturday evening on Spring Garden Hill above southeast Baker City.

An estimated 10 million gallons of water, along with countless tons of mud and gravel, rumbled down the steep slope and transformed streets and yards into sloppy quagmires.

Jim Young, whose home’s crawl space was flooded with two feet of water, said his insurance policy does not cover the damage.

Young’s situation is typical, said John Piper of the Oregon Insurance Division.

andquot;We’re not aware of any homeowner policy that would cover this kind of incident,andquot; Piper said.

In most such cases the ditch owner’s insurance would pay for damages, Piper said.

But the company that owns the Smith Ditch apparently lacks liability insurance.

Mike Trindle, a local rancher who is one of the company’s three directors, said he is not aware of any such policy.

But Trindle said he is not absolutely certain whether or not the company has insurance.

He referred questions to the company’s lawyer, David Coughlin of Baker City.

Coughlin is out of town and won’t return until later this week, said one of his law partners, Martin Leuenberger.

The uncertainty about insurance leaves residents such as Donna Hickerson wondering what to do with the dirty debris strewn across their lots.

andquot;I’ve got all kinds of mud on my property,andquot; Hickerson said. andquot;It’s about 10 inches deep in my front yard.andquot;

Hickerson said she relies on Social Security, and is physically unable to shovel the mud herself.

andquot;I haven’t the slightest idea what I’ll do,andquot; she said this morning.

Baker City crews continued to work today to scrape mud from streets and from yards, interim City Manager Tim Collins said.

Residents who want help from city workers can call City Hall at 523-6541.

Collins cautioned, though, that the crews are using excavators and backhoes, which are too big to reach every square foot of mud-covered ground.

andquot;We’ll do the best we can,andquot; he said.

The city also hired five contractors to help clear streets on Sunday.

The city paid that bill of a couple thousand dollars, but Collins said he expects the ditch company to repay the city for all clean-up costs.

Dust is becoming a problem throughout east Baker City, as well.

The 90-degree weather since the weekend has dried the skim of mud coating streets, and each passing car leaves a gritty cloud in its wake.

Then there’s the matter of repairing the ditch.

Trindle said the 19-mile-long ditch, which supplies water to about 20 landowners who irrigate some 3,000 acres, will be repaired.

andquot;It irrigates too many acres not to repair it,andquot; he said.

Trindle said he does not think the ditch company maintains a cash reserve in its budget.

Each landowner pays a yearly fee that ranges from $10 to $20 per irrigated acre, he said.

That money pays to maintain the ditch.

Trindle said a andquot;ditch walkerandquot; patrols the waterway daily, clearing culverts clogged with weeds or other debris, and making sure the water flows freely.

Finding a badger hole, which local irrigation manager Jim Colton suspects caused the ditch failure Saturday, can be difficult, Trindle said.

andquot;I don’t know that there will be a definitive answerandquot; as to the cause, he said. andquot;A hole might not leak right away and be apparent. And on a hillside like that it doesn’t take much of a trickle to start moving dirt.andquot;

Trindle said he believes officials did as much as possible to minimize the damage.

Workers quickly closed the headgate where Powder River water enters the ditch in Bowen Valley.

Trindle said they could have purposely breached the ditch upstream from the city, but that would have concentrated the flooding on someone else’s property.

And even then the water remaining in the ditch downstream would have poured from the fissure on Spring Garden Hill, he said.

andquot;I don’t see where there could have been any more done,andquot; Trindle said.

Damage to the ditch is too severe to fix before the irrigation season ends, he said.

andquot;It’s over for this year,andquot; Trindle said. andquot;That’ll surely affect a lot of people’s third cutting of hay, and their pastures. They’ll just dry up.andquot;

The ditch company’s water rights guaranteed landowners about 10 more days of water from the ditch, Trindle said.

That water would have taken them through a third cutting of hay, and greened their pastures for cattle grazing this fall.

Without the water, some ranchers might forego the third cutting and turn out their cattle early, Trindle said.

Some ditch company members also own supplementary wells, he said.