Regenerative Water Alliance
upcoming rwa meeting and Hydrate the Earth book
Hello regenerative water folk,
This is the inaugural newsletter of the Regenerative Water Alliance, which seeks to bring together people, communities and organizations interested and working in the regenerative water field, and activate projects to restore the water cycle, hydrate the earth, and bring water into harmony in the climate system. We are building partnerships, putting on educational events, organizing community efforts, collecting scientific data, and raising funds to support projects that are working to rehydrate the planet.
There are two upcoming meetings:
Australia and Water: an open roundtable discussion with practitioners from farming, floods, fire recovery, and permaculture experts sharing how they are working to restore Australia's water systems. Everyone, of any experience, is welcome from around the world, with the main participants will be Australian regenerative practitioners. If you are one, please come to share your work relating to water restoration. On July 5th Tues 3-4:30pm Pacific Time, 11 pm British Standard Time, July 6th Wed 8am-9:30am Australia EST
Partnership Building Networking gathering with participants from around the world to learn more about our projects and potential partnership-building potentials through breakout rooms and speed networking games. July 7th Thurs 8:30-10am Pacific Time , Thurs 4:30pm British Standard Time, Fri 1:30am-3am Australia EST
Zoom link for both meetings: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4387884267?pwd=Qk1Ob0RIbjhEQzBCcWpyazFXVG1QUT09
(note there is a change in the zoom link from meetings 6 weeks ago, which is why in your calendar it might say previous event cancelled. That was done to change the zoom link. The event is still on. )
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Here is more information about some organizations working with water in Australia
Mulloon Institute : https://themullooninstitute.org
International Water Centre : www.watercentre.org
CSIRO water https://www.csiro.au/en/research/natural-environment/water
Australia has one of the worst examples of the drought-fire-flood cycle where drought leads to fire, fire leads to waxy substance forming on soil, which causes water uphill to runoff with absorbing, and so creating floods lower down, and where floods wash away soil, which help absorb rainwater to keep vegetation hydrated and rivers running into dry season.
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HYDRATE THE EARTH
“Hydrate the earth” is a book by Ananda Fitzsimmons on the role of water in the climate crisis, and about how we help our landscapes rehydrate.
Here she is talking about her book:
“When I became aware that ecosystem restoration could fix the broken water cycles and remediate most of the extreme weather that climate change is serving up to us, I was really hopeful. Hopeful because it is apparent to me that fixing climate change by reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is not going to happen fast enough. When the IPCC issued warnings that we have a decade to turn this around before inevitable catastrophic consequences, I figured we were screwed and I despaired for my children and grandchildren.
Then I saw real examples that with low tech solutions, it is possible to alter regional climate in just a few years. I learned that with enough of these regional projects we can re- establish the small water cycle in a significant enough way to create food security and keep the climate liveable. So I had to share this knowledge. I wrote the book to get the message out in clear, easy for anyone to understand language. Because the current climate narrative is overly focused on carbon, we need a big push to get more people involved in nature based solutions to restore water cycles around the world.
I sincerely hope that Hydrate the Earth will be used as an educational tool for people of all ages and that it will be a step in changing how we think about climate action.”
Heres an excerpt from her book “Hydrate the Earth” :
‘Takota Coen is a young farmer and consultant in Alberta, Canada. He farms a 250 acre property with his parents, Coen Farm, in central Alberta,. Takota’s family has farmed this land for four generations, but Takota wanted out of farming when he finished school. After several years of exploration and discovery however, he decided to return to the farm in 2012, because he had come to believe that farming and the food system was not only the source of many serious environmental problems, but also the potential remedy! He wanted to restore the land to health by putting into practice what he had learned about permaculture and regenerative agriculture.
Takota has a photograph of his great grandparents on their homestead taken in 1914. At the time they supplied all of their water needs from a hand dug well. The well was only fourteen feet deep. The farm borders Red Deer Lake, which in 1914 was a spring fed lake. In the 100 year period before Takota returned to the farm determined to restore the land to its true potential, water levels had dropped drastically and adequate water supply had become a serious issue for Alberta farmers. Although Takota’s parents were environmentally minded and had converted the farm to organic in 1988, water issues remained very problematic.
Red Deer Lake no longer had springs. Wetlands which had once been on the property, home to beavers, muskrats and abundant other forms of life had been filled in or had dried up. The well which supplied the farm was 180 feet deep and the family had to trickle feed water all night to get enough water to fill a reservoir in the barn with enough water to provide drinking water for the cattle.
There were no more trees left on the farm. In 2002, there was a terrible drought in Alberta. Barely 2 inches of water fell in the space of a year. Wildfires burned out of control and fire spread underground because there was so little moisture in the land.
Takota’s plan was to build the soil by switching to holistic managed grazing with the cattle herd, plant trees and perennial shrubs in agroforestry plantations and to restore the watercycles by implementing keyline design and the principles of slow it, spread it, sink it.
He researched the historical type of ecosystem which had formerly thrived in his geography pre-colonization. The original biome was a combination of grasslands with patches of tree cover. He looked for where there had formerly been wetlands. And he studied the contours of the property to understand the water flow patterns.
The design finally conceived and implemented involved digging three major swales about 3 feet deep and over 600 metres long at different levels of elevation. The highest swale feeds a large dam near the top of the property which holds 30,000 gallons of water. Fifty percent of the annual precipitation comes in the form of spring run off when the snow melts. That is why it is important to take advantage of this large quantity of water which comes only once in the year. This dam has a valve which can be opened or closed to allow the water to flood into lower swales and into a series of smaller ponds, dams and swales which wind their way through the land. All together there are three kilometers worth of swales directing water to strategic locations.
The dam holds a reserve of water to provide the farm with resilience in case of multiple drought years. Takota figures he has enough water stored to provide the farm’s need for 5 years and he has plans to add more structures to increase that reserve to 10 years.
When he opens the spillway from Double D Dam to flood the lower earthworks, the ponds and swales stay full for weeks as the water infiltrates slowly into the ground. The water feeds into berms on which the fruit and nut trees have been planted and fills the system which provides drinking water for the cattle. There are taps installed every 200 metres throughout the farm to provide clean drinking water in all of the different paddocks where the cows graze.
The farm is home as well to pastured pigs. The constructed wetlands are the perfect habitat for the annual growth of perennial cattails. By July once the wetlands have almost dried up, the pigs are moved in to feast on the year's crop of cattails, which happen to be highly nutritious.
It took 100 years to degrade the land, but this type of intensive restoration is bringing the water levels back much more rapidly. In 2015, Alberta had another major drought and following on the heels of that came the worst flooding that had been experienced in decades. Although the neighbouring farms suffered major hardship from both of these events, Coen Farm did not. They had the water reserves to meet all of their needs through the drought, and their soil and the water infrastructure absorbed the excess water from the floods without any problem.
The wetlands are staying wet for longer as the years go by; the springs are returning in Red Deer Lake; and the well is providing a much faster debit of water than ever before. This change took less than a decade. As the Coens increase the amount of carbon stored in their soil through regenerative agriculture practices, the land is able to store greater and greater amounts of water. One real surprise was when their neighbours came on a farm tour and heard about what the Coen family has been doing, they realized that their efforts were actually recharging their neighbours wells and not only their own!’
links to the “Hydrate the earth book” https://www.editions-labutineuse.com/en/product/hydrate-the-earth/ and Hydrate the Earth on Amazon