‘An absolute necessity’

DENTON – There are ditches – the ubiquitous kind that border highways, roads and lanes – and then there are tax ditches.

In part 1 of this series, we began exploring the basics of agricultural drainage, or “tax” ditches, in Caroline County, but who manages them? How are they maintained? And do they still serve a purpose in the 21^st century?

The “old school technology” still has value and is “an absolute necessity for our way of life,” according to Trista North of the Maryland Department of Agriculture, who is the Public Drainage Association Coordinator for Caroline, Queen Anne's and Kent counties. She’s been headquartered at the Caroline Soil Conservation District office in Denton for 23 years, and for the past three years has assisted the PDA managers.

The 368-mile network of agricultural drainage ditches is “basically like the vascular system of … how we exist around here,” North said. “There would be way more wetlands. There would be way more low-lying areas that would be undeveloped in any regard – cropping, urban, commercial, anything – if these ditches did not exist.”

“Especially in the northern part of the county, there's a lot of low-lying areas that would still be underwater at this point and would not be able to have viable crop ground,” North said. “The farmers wouldn't be able to actually till and houses wouldn't be able to be built.”

When farmland drains towards a ditch, “you don’t have wet pockets out in your field,” North said. “You actually have viable crop ground, … and therefore your ground is more productive.”

Like roadside ditches, ag drainage ditches require maintenance, accomplished by 68 public drainage associations, or PDAs, in the county. Some are so small they belong to a single owner, others are deemed inactive, and 54 PDAs are currently assessing taxes, North said.

PDAs were established by state law in 1957. The statute was amended in 1994, and Public Watershed Associations (PWA) were authorized. The PDA and PWA laws closely resemble each other. On the Eastern Shore, there are 101 active PDAs and four active PWAs maintaining 821 miles of ditches.

Article 25 of the Annotated Code of Maryland established PDAs as political entities with the authority to establish and maintain the ditches and levy taxes on landowners whose property borders a PDA ditch, acquired by easement from the original landowners.

Each PDA is comprised of three managers who serve staggered terms and usually own land bordered by the particular ditch. They are the “boots on the ground,” North said.

“They're the ones that actually go out, and they're our eyes in the field,” she said. “It’s their land. The tax ditches are built on their land, … and they make the decisions of what needs to happen to those ditches,” even it means removing a beaver dam that’s blocking drainage.

North coordinates maintenance, archives all the paperwork, sends the tax rolls to the treasurer’s office, and keeps track of a vast array of regulations from the state Department of Natural Resources, the Department of Environment, the Department of Agriculture, and even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). “It gets very, very technical and involved,” she said.

As “blue line streams,” tax ditches are regulated waters of the state, North said. For example, from March 15 to June 15, “we cannot work in the channels because of the fish spawning season.” In the Longmarsh ditch, there are sand bars in the middle of the channel, habitat for an endangered species of freshwater mussel. “We’re not allowed to dip that out because there is a dwarf wedgemussel that is habited there,” North said.

Each PDA is named after the ditch network. Some ditches are as short as a half-mile. Longmarsh ditch at the northern end of the county stretches 24 miles, forming part of the border separating Caroline and Queen Anne’s counties. Anyone who has traveled State Route 313 between Ingleside and Baltimore Corner has crossed over it.

“Some (ditch networks) might be the better part of 21 miles that meander through woods and fields and down county roads and state highways,” North said. A main channel with tributaries link together to form a system. “Each one of them is uniquely different on how much maintenance they need, and what their needs are. Some are more heavily used than others.”

Blair Carmean is a manager of the Chicken Bridge PDA south of Ridgely, a network of over 16 miles of ditches, spurs and branches. The family farm his grandfather bought in the 1960s benefits from the drainage ditches.

While members of PDAs usually consist of those whose property adjoins the ditches, not everyone participates. Ditch maintenance funds depend on nominal tax ditch assessments set by each PDA and billed by the county. The PDAs have a legal easement or right of way across the properties of landowners in the benefited area.

The state of Maryland paid for maintenance of the ditches until 1995. Caroline County provided funds for ditch maintenance until 2008, North said, and again set aside funds for 2024 and 2025, but not for fiscal year 2026. “However, because the county maintains and replaces culverts over roadways for ditch water movement, they contribute indirectly to maintenance,” North said.

Taxes are determined by a formula that accounts for cropland, as well as woodland that has less agricultural value. The taxes then partially pay for routine maintenance determined by the plan: “dipping,” or removal of sediment and debris (at least every 15 to 20 years), mowing vegetation on the flats along the top sides of a farm field ditch, or controlling the woody growth in the bank, or slopes.

“We try very hard to keep the grass established in the ditch,” Carmean said.

When the ditches are working as designed, folks don’t think about them, Carmean said. “It's just there and it works, and as long as it's working, there's no worries.” Major rain events can occasionally inundate ditches and flood roadways.

Over time, some farm fields have been become residential subdivisions. “Whether there are 60 houses in a farm field now that weren't there before, … those ditches are still there,” North said. “They weren't designed to handle that much runoff from houses and yards. … so obviously more maintenance would come with that because they're being used more heavily than … a field that has been cropped for 50 years or more.”

Most ditches contain vegetation, and some are so lush with trees and undergrowth they don’t look like ag ditches. But that overgrowth is beneficial. It helps with water quality as it stabilizes the bank, especially in sandy soil in the mid and south county area.

“The root system actually holds the soil together,” North said. “So if we get the remnants of a hurricane that dumps eight or nine inches of rain on us in a day or two, the ditches get really full and the water velocity is great. The vegetation and root structure is not going to tear the banks up nearly as bad.” Vegetation also helps reduce nutrient and sediment loads into the Chesapeake Bay.

Today, best management practices (BMPs) are employed to protect the Chesapeake Bay watershed, of which the ditches are a part.

According to the 2009 Marydel Comprehensive Plan, “drainage extends beyond its original agricultural domain. Drainage allows for expanded residential and commercial development. A lower water table enhances the function of private septic systems while the original ditching network is often incorporated into a municipality’s stormwater management system.”

“Benefits are viewed as considerable by farmers, forest products industries, and residents who view drainage as ‘the bread and butter of the Eastern Shore,’” the Marydel Comp Plan states.

Cropland accounts for about 50% of land use on the Delmarva Peninsula, according to “Moving Water,” a report issued by the Public Drainage Task Force in October 2000. North considers PDAs essential to maintaining agriculture as “our number one industry here” in Caroline County

“Small grain is our biggest commodity,” she said. “We wouldn’t have the yields that we have without drainage.”

Carmean agrees. “It’s imperative infrastructure within the county,” he said.

In Part 3 of this 3-part series, we will take another look at the historical framework of tax ditches, as well as current best management practices.

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2882 – Part of the Chicken Bridge drainage ditch network flows through a wooded area off Holsinger Lane south of Ridgely. (Photo by Connie Connolly)

2891 – Drainage water flows through a large culvert under Holsinger Lane. (Photo by Connie Connolly)

2899 – A shallow drainage ditch extends along a farm field on Central Avenue south of Ridgely. (Photo by Connie Connolly)

Chicken Bridge PDA detail – The Chicken Bridge PDA’s agricultural drainage ditch network south of Ridgely comprises over 16 miles of ditches, spurs and branches.

Choptank_PDA_map – This 2014 map shows the names and locations of Public Drainage Associations on the Caroline County side of the Choptank River.