I do.

I fail to see what this had to do with GWB, apart from the fact that you americans waste more energy hating him than working to replace him.

Facts, from the Truckee-Carlson Irrigation District:

• they are "a political subdivision of the State of Nevada" (probably like a city or town, but their powers are likely limited to water supply)
• like any other water utility they bear the sole responsibility to operate and maintain the works (including their canals). Note the word canals, not levees. Totally different purpose. From the above page:

  The Truckee-Carson Irrigation District by contract with the United States took over the operation and maintenance of the Newlands Reclamation Project in January 1927. Since then, the District has been responsible for the operation and maintenance of the entire federal project which includes the dam at Lake Tahoe, Derby Dam, the Truckee Canal, Lahontan Dam and approximately 380 miles of canals and 345 miles of drains.

• I saw a reference to ditch rider training in their April 2007 minutes. Ditch riders are the ones who monitor water consumption, and inspect and maintain the canal system.
• Based on the above, inspection and maintenance of the canals is clearly the job of TCID, not the current occupant of the white house
• they have 55 staff, and an operating budget of $3.5 million. That isn't very much money for an organization that supplies 215,000 acre-feet of water, so many of their staff must be seasonal, or else they spend very little on equipment and renewal, and next to nothing on capital projects. I didn't see a budget on their site to confirm this, but I read enough of their board and finance committee minutes to be fairly comfortable with that assessment.
• the total crop value of the area serviced by TCID was only $13.2 million in 1992. Bugger all, in other words. There isn't enough farm income in the entire area to permit them to raise water rates enough to rebuild or improve the canals (ie, concrete lining), or to put much money into infrastructure renewal. Renewal is the ongoing replacement of all of your fixed assets, as things like water piping has a lifespan. Canals don't really ever need to be replaced (unlike buried water pipes), so they don't need much renewal spending, just ongoing inspection and maintenance. With 350 miles of canals (700 miles if you have to inspect both sides, but I'll stick with 350), their entire annual budget gives them $10,000 / mile, or $1 per foot of canal per year.

The problems in Fernley have nothing to do with the american misadventures in Iraq. The way the numbers look to me, farming and irrigation in that area is not really financially sustainable. You can't put real money into that system on the basis of the limited farm revenues. So unless you believe that your federal government should be subsidizing water supply, get used to events like canal failures like this one throughout the western usa. What you have with TCID is a canal system which is largely paid for and governed by the farmers who use the water. They run the system on a shoestring because it is either that, or else they have to double or triple their water rates, which would basically shut down agriculture in the entire region.

My guess is that they do the best they can, with the money they have, and neither will ever be enough to prevent all possible infrastructure failures.

But hey, why let facts or a little bit of basic research stand in the way of a good hate-on, right?