Land Management
Working with nature through contouring land to hold water refreshes aquifers and underground water and reduces costs.
Village Homes, Davis, California 1974
Village Homes was designed to hold water. After 50 years, the soil was deep enough that a 500-year rain event; 5 inches of rain in a day, produced NO flooding. The point of land management, from the Biotic Pump point of view, is to ensure that rain water slows down long enough to seep back into the ground. By working with natural contours, by asking, "What does water want?" effective management practices put ponds, swales, rain gardens, and small dams in place to hold and direct water to trees and other features that all help to keep the rain water that falls.
This event, occurred in the northern California and southern Oregon regions, in late October 2021 when several atmospheric rivers formed driven by tropical warmth, precipitating millions of gallons of water, all in a short time. The rainfall was about 5 inches in one day. Village Homes did not flood, and in fact took some additional runoff from the surrounding area. This project saved money in construction by not buying cement pipes for the stormwater system. That money was used to buy fruit trees. The soil held water to a depth of one foot in the first year, 10 feet in the second year and 17 feet in the third year. The project is now 50 years old.
The Role of Policy
Policy that requires new development to take into account the keeping and management of water means that new development will be able to address the coming risks. It also means that some remedial work may need to be done, but cities such as Tuscon and Los Angeles have shown that it can be done, and in many cases is much easier than first thought.
Reclaiming Degraded Land
Old quarry's, demolished building sites, land that seems unredeemable, CAN we be brought back to life! This video was made in Texas, where drought has been extensive, yet the restoration has been quick. This is one of the best videos on land restoration I've come across.
