Idaho Farmers Discover HDPE

Conservation-minded farmers in the State of Idaho are using HDPE pipelines to replace water wasting open ditch irrigation

Fairfield ID - Brian Shields pulls his truck to the side of a rural Idaho highway to fire up his Pocket PC, check his GPS and talk on his headset phone. He is stroking his Fu Manchu while finalizing another pipe deal and looks more like one of the Hells Angels than a technically advanced traveling sales rep. Shields hangs up, sits and stares over the steering wheel at his big-sky office. Rows of irrigation sprinklers cover green alfalfa fields sprawl to the distant Sawtooth Mountains that punctuating the horizon. "Nature didn't plan for this country to be so green," he says, indicating that only 8 to 12 inches of rain falls annually and not even that much during the last seven years of record drought. "But smart farmers have always figured out a way to make this land produce; I'm just glad that polyethylene pipe is becoming a part of the equation."