Decked out in hot pink rubber boots and gloves, 7-year-old Sierra Lindsey was one of the most fashionable people helping clean out the Acequia Madre on Santa Fe's east side Saturday morning — and definitely the youngest.

"I don't know where my friends are," said Sierra, who attends Acequia Madre Elementary School, as she busily raked up leaves and debris in the ancient irrigation district. "They knew we were cleaning the ditch today."

Sierra was among 42 people who turned out for the 400th annual spring cleaning of the oldest irrigation ditch in the City Different. It is the third oldest ditch in the United States and is listed on the National Historic Register. Phillip Bové, one of the acequia's four commissioners, says the ditch may be older than Santa Fe. "We know pueblo people were here before and they may have used some version of the ditch to irrigate," he said recently.

This was the 15th year Steve Reed pitched in to clean the 7-mile-long acequia, which winds along Acequia Madre through Santa Fe and eventually ends in Agua Fría. He leases water from the ditch each year for his garden. "This is a real community effort," he said, as he stuffed leaves in a big, black garbage bag for the city to haul off. "You get to know your neighbors. You become friends. It helps maintain community cohesion."

The annual acequia cleaning is an ancient, revered tradition all over New Mexico. Ditch members, or parciantes, have the oldest water rights in the state, except for tribes and pueblos. Their rights to the water are legally paramount, even over cities. Each ditch is governed by an acequia association managed by commissioners. A mayordomo, or ditch boss, divides water up each irrigation season between the parciantes. The amount of available water depends entirely on nature's whims.

This year the snowpack in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that feeds the Santa Fe River has been so good, extra water was available to flush out the ditch's debris earlier in the season. That makes the annual cleaning a lot easier.

Juan Antonio Rodriguez was helping his friend Dan Guy clean the ditch, though he gets no water out of it. He said keeping the ditch clean so the water can flow is a good thing.

Guy said last year's cleaning was "back breaking. Not as many people showed up to help."

But once the ditch is clean and the water is officially released into the acequia, "there is nothing more pleasurable than drinking a beer and watching the water flow by," said Guy, who along with his wife, Terri Guy, hosted a barbecue for all the ditch cleaners later in the day.

The Acequia Madre has had a love-hate relationship with the city. After the first reservoirs went in on the upper Santa Fe River to store water for urban use in the late 1800s and early 1900s, water available for irrigation declined. Bové said the Acequia Madre and Acequia Cerro Gordo asked for irrigation water several times over the decades, but the water company, then owned by Public Service Company of New Mexico, claimed it owned all the water rights. In 1990, the acequia associations took the issue to court. Then 1st Judicial District Judge Art Encinias ruled the acequias had water rights and ordered PNM to make regular water releases to the ditch. The rights on the ditch were established as "time immemorial or prior to 1680."

The ditch ended up acting as a stormwater drain for city streets as Santa Fe grew, which damaged the acequia. Over the years, the city has worked with the acequia association to mitigate damage and help preserve the ditch.

In its first three centuries, the acequia watered fields of vegetables and wheat and large orchards. Now, surrounded by houses and businesses on both sides its entire length, the ditch is used to water fruit trees, gardens, flowers and yards.

Still, every year the ditch needs care and cleaning so that when the head gate is open, the water has a clear path to its destination.

"Some toss garbage at her, hit her with their cars and try to drown her with fast running mud and rock-filled torrents," wrote Bové in a short history of the acequia. "Others clean her, patch her sides, comb her grassy hair so she may rest and be ready for the next assault. How long can she hold out?"

Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.