The flood came quickly and receded just as quickly. By the next day, the floodwater coming down from the reed beds was too shallow to reach anyone's knees.
Li Jianguo drove the tractor to the western flood-control canal and used the bulldozer blade attached to it to seal the floodwater outlet. Water in the main canal here still had to be sent downstream. They had opened the gap earlier to drain the floodwater, but now that the flood had receded, they had to close it. Otherwise, when the water management station released water this way later, it would all run into Reed Gully.
Everyone knew there would be more major floods in June and July, but they would deal with those when the time came. For now, they had to take care of what was in front of them.
When Li Long returned to the Fourth Team the next day, he heard another piece of news.
"When the flood went through East Big Ditch, it washed out the upper, middle, and lower reservoirs!"
East Big Ditch was less than three kilometers east of the Fourth Team, right beside the Huke Highway that would be built later. Long ago, it had been a river, but after the river upstream changed course, it became a dry ditch. Li Long had caught rabbits there before.
Last year or the year before, someone had made an off-the-cuff decision to bulldoze three dams across the upper, middle, and lower reaches of East Big Ditch. They had then reshaped the ground in front of the dams to create three reservoirs-except there was no water.
The people who built the dams had probably intended to hold back the floodwater when it came, thereby filling the reservoirs. Then they would be useful for either raising fish or storing