Residents

Working with nature by understanding the biotic pump is a natural solution to weather disruptions and gives our agency direction and purpose. Make a Pledge - that you will actively engage in revitalizing your city by revitalizing your soil!

Have You Pledged?

Join the movement of city residents pledging to work to ensure that their soil is vibrant and alive. City residents are doing their part in ensuring a resilient city by making sure their soil will hold water. Sponge like soil ensures that all plants, especially trees, get deep watering, making them drought resistant. Wetter soils and green tree cover equate to cooler temperatures (up to 15 degrees) during hot spells. Wetter soils are also fire-resistant.
JOIN US.

Check out your nature score

Discover how healthy YOUR address is by using this tool.

Healthy Soil

Every homeowner and many renters can compost, amend their soil, and even add biochar at very little to no cost. Each resident can directly impact our water resilience by creating healthy soil. Soil that holds water reduces your need to water, saving you money, and it helps put water back into our aquifer. Paying attention to healthy soil, year after year, means that the soil improves, over time, to hold more water, every year, especially when supported by effective landscape design.

Working together, residents can make incredible changes, very quickly - PLEDGE NOW - start now!

Water

 Healthy soil, that holds water, means less need for watering. Combined with landscape design, slowing water down, contributes to underground water systems and refreshes our aquifer. Most locations get more rain than they use.

In Spokane, Washington, the average rainfall is 17 inches a year. That is considered dry. Spokane is a high water user, consuming about twice the water of most cities its size. The 200,000 residents use about 53 million gallons of water a year. They get 17 billion of gallons of rainfall. This seems to be the norm, we get more water than we use. The key - is keeping it!

Soil is the second-biggest water reservoir, we just need to learn to use it well.

Landscape Design

The perfect approach to connecting land with water can be summarized as: slow, spread and sink. Capturing stormwater will reduce flooding, increase home and yard cooling, while improving your living experience. By capturing and diverting rainwater toward trees, holding it in swales, rain gardens, and dry creek beds, water will stay around to be available during dry spells. When combined with the creation and maintenance of healthy soil, your land will build up its capacity to hold water. Village Homes, in Davis, California, was designed in just this way. Their land held water to about a foot in the first year, 10 feet in the second year, and then 17 feet in the third year. It is now 50 years old. Effective landscape design is an investment in the future that will pay dividends for years.

Village Homes - Davis, California

Built in 1974
Narrator - Bill Mollison, Permaculture Expert
Our whole city could be like this!

Healthy Soil Holds Water

Swales, rain gardens, and directing water to trees increases water retention over time.
Slowing down water allows for refreshing underground streams.
Healthy soil brings back water.
Moist soil helps with cooling and risk management.

Making a Sponge City

Creating healthy soil and ensuring its continued health will increase your soil's capacity to hold more water, over time.
Reducing the risk of drought, flood and fire.

60% of our water comes from

the Biotic Pump

About Us

Revealing to humans the agency we have to help LIFE thrive here on Earth by revitalizing the cities we already live in.

1819 E. Liberty Ave        Spokane, WA 99207         (509) 934-5930
Soil Smart - Soil Wise is a fiscally sponsored project of Inquiring Systems, Inc. EIN: 94-2524840