Tom Orzulak has a real pain-in-the-behind boss.

One of those bosses that’s demanding, unpredictable and unforgiving. But here’s the twist: Orzulak’s boss – at least on days like today – is the Kansas River.

“And let me tell you, it does whatever it wants to do,” Orzulak said of the swollen Kaw.

Orzulak oversees the crew of city employees that maintains the city’s 13-mile Kansas River/Mud Creek levee and a system of 25 tubes that run through the levee. Properly managing that system of tubes is the difference between acres of farmland, roads and, in some cases, homes staying dry or becoming inundated with floodwater.

The tubes, when open, allow stormwater to flow out of North Lawrence into the river. But if they are left open too long and the river rises too high, the tubes provide a way for Kansas River water to rush into North Lawrence.

The job is a real old-fashioned undertaking. No automated systems tell Orzulak when the gates should be opened or closed. Orzulak does look on the Internet for Kansas River levels, but most of what he does is an exercise in observation.

“There is nobody who calls you and says that the river is going up,” said Orzulak, who has been on the job for 17 years. “There is a lot of experience involved in knowing when that is going to happen. I watch the weather a lot.”

And that means not just the Lawrence weather. Orzulak said he’s largely concerned with the weather on both sides of Lawrence. Westward, Orzulak watches weather all the way to Salina. For example, Orzulak knew that the 7 inches of rain that fell late last week on Salina would result in high river levels here about Sunday.

Most days, Orzulak’s work goes unnoticed by many of the North Lawrence residents who benefit from it.

“Not really,” Julie Edmondson, a North Lawrence resident who was watching the river Monday, said when asked whether she was aware of the system. “I’m glad they’re doing it. I just know that when I see the water getting high, I start to get a little concerned.”

During the flood of 1993, the tube-and-gate system did become an issue. Some North Lawrence residents thought the gates were allowed to stay open too long, which led to more North Lawrence flooding.

North Lawrence leaders in the past have lobbied for more of the tubes to have pumps installed on them. The pumps would create enough outward pressure to stop river water from backing up through the tubes.

For this storm, Orzulak started closing gates at 3 p.m. Sunday. He put his crew of five maintenance workers on a 24-hour patrol of the tubes early Monday.

That meant Dale Mooney and Howard Clark – the two crew members on duty Monday – spent most of the day driving a continuous 27-mile loop around the levee system. Each tube needed to be checked at least every two hours.

Mooney and Clark peer down deep pits to see whether water has covered the tubes. If it has, they hook a large drill-like machine onto a gate valve. They then hang on for about five minutes as the machine lowers the gate, which can weigh more than 3 tons.

Mooney, who has been doing the job for 12 years, said he’s grown used to the work, and even looks forward to it in some ways.

“Overtime,” Mooney said when asked what he thinks about when he sees a rainstorm moving in. “We’ll probably be dealing with this for a week because we’re getting all the downstream water from the heavy rains up north.”

Orzulak, though, is optimistic that this rain event shouldn’t create many flooding problems for North Lawrence. That is, if the weather forecasts are correct and the worst rains are behind us. If heavy rains happen while the tubes are closed, that could result in flooding.

Orzulak – who also is the city employee responsible for dispatching crews to clean the city streets of snow – will be doing what he always does: keeping an eye toward the sky.

“Watching the weather, I guess, is a forced hobby for me,” Orzulak said. “But I like it. It is a lot of responsibility, but I wouldn’t have been here 17 years if I didn’t like it.”