GRANITE FALLS — Hazel Township property owner Robert Weber doesn’t understand why he has to help pay for a drainage ditch improvement project he doesn’t need.

“We don’t have water problems,” Weber said. “The ditch was cleaned less than five years ago. The county came out to inspect it last year and found that the culvert was squished down. They replaced it. Nothing had drowned out. The neighbors had nothing drowned out. Why should we endure the cost?”

Weber’s dilemma started with a petition that was unanimously approved by the Yellow Medicine County commissioners Tuesday.

Petitioner Dean Buesing, representing Buesing-Buesing, LLC of rural Granite Falls, appeared before the board to present a petition to change an existing county ditch into a tiled flat land by applying separable maintenance as provided under Minnesota statute, which would allow for a portion of the ditch to be maintained separately from other portions of its drainage system.

In the petition, the Buesings requested “that the drainage authority accept this petition, review it and determine that it is legally adequate.”

The petition also asked that the drainage authority appoint Bill Helget of Bolton and Menk as engineer for the purposes of the proposed improvement and direct the engineer to prepare an engineer’s preliminary report for the proposed improvement as provided by statute.

The county board acknowledged Helget may not be available for the project but found the rest of the petition in order and unanimously approved hiring an engineer and viewers to see if the project is worth doing and to get an estimate as to what it would cost.

In signing the petition, the petitioners agreed to abide by certain conditions such as posting a $10,000 bond with the ditch authority.

“The drainage system has insufficient capacity or needs enlarging or extending to furnish sufficient capacity or a better outlet,” the petition reads. “The proposed improvement includes construction of tile to replace an open ditch, which is required in a Minnesota statute.”

The proposed improvement was to tile what is currently County Ditch No. 36 located in Yellow Medicine County in order to fill it in. proponents say that will allow farming straight across the ditch. That would avoid large implement turn-around issues as well as buffer zone requirements.

The tile proposed would be a buried 18-inch tile, which would connect to the 15-inch tile that currently is part of Branch 4 of County Ditch No. 36.

Additionally, the improvement requested would include the construction and installation of a new 18-inch tile that would run from the point on the westerly boundary of the Buesing property where the current open ditch ends. From there it would proceed southeasterly across the Buesing property, then continue south. It would cross under Minnesota Highway 67 into a new section of property where the new 18-inch tile would connect to Branch 4 of County Ditch No. 36.

But the project would affect two other properties. One of them is owned by Weber. Weber said he is near retirement and didn’t want to have to pay for his farm all over again by paying for this “unnecessary project.”

“It’s more of a convenience than a necessity,” Weber said.

Another property owner, Stanley Homan agreed.

“If the system isn’t broken, why change it? Especially at the cost of others,” he said.

“We don’t know how deep they’ll put the tile or how much it will cost. It will go diagonally across our property. It might even back up on us without doing other things to prevent it. It’s taking away individual rights and awarding authority to the corporation,” Homan said.

Commissioner Greg Renneke said that opponents will have an opportunity at another public meeting to voice their opposition to the ditch improvement that they do not consider to be an improvement.