Man-made or space aliens?  While some of the very elaborate crop circles that have been found in England and other places have been attributed to humans – not all have. 

Sussex County, Delaware has its own version of crop circles as I discovered one day while playing with the hybrid version of Google maps.  But what is making these?  While some are indeed circles – others are more reminiscent of Pac Man running rampant across our corn or soybean fields. 

As I scrolled around through Eastern Sussex County – I decided to see if these circles were found all over the county – and yes – they are – around Coverdale Crossroads and Seaford just to name a couple. 

I had an idea that the cause of the Sussex County’s crop circles is spray irrigation or wastewater irrigation.  Just to be sure, I asked Mike McGrath – with the Delaware Agricultural Lands Preservation Foundation what might be the cause.  He agreed that it was spray irrigation… ” I’m not sure whether or not they are wastewater spray…”

Next I went to a source closer to home – County Engineer, Mike Izzo who told me…

“You are correct, the circles are the result of irrigated fields, however they may not necessarily be wastewater irrigated. Standard “groundwater only” irrigation systems will likewise produce the circle effect. The specific locations you reference in your e-mail, i.e. Wolfe Neck, near Mountaire in Millsboro are wastewater -related. I’m not sure why the wastewater standout as much, but it may be related to the time of year that the photo was taken. Often, such photo’s are taken in the winter as you can see more with the leaves off the trees. Standard water only systems don’t pump in the winter because there is generally not a crop or it doesn’t need irrigation. But with wastewater, if it’s not freezing, we’re spraying.”

And looking at the area near Lewes, where the Wolfneck Rd Wastewater Treatment facility is – I saw more circles that along with the ones I saw near Mountaire tell me they really are spray irrigation – of one sort or another. 

These ‘circles’ are nothing that you will see from ground level, but I’m sure planes flying overhead as well as the satellite that snapped the Google images, have no trouble seeing the less-adorned Sussex County crop circles.  Mystery solved.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 8th, 2007 at 12:35 pm and is filed under Agriculture, Delaware, Land Management, Sussex County. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.