Watershed Wisdom Councils : Regen Water Alliance
Regenerative Water Alliance (RWA) will be hosting a Watershed Wisdom Council on
Thurs. Aug 18th, 9:00 am-10:30 am (Pacific Time)
Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4387884267?pwd=Qk1Ob0RIbjhEQzBCcWpyazFXVG1QUT09
RWA will also be hosting a topical session on the first Thursday of every month. The next one being on Sept 1st at 9am (PT).
……….
The Watershed Wisdom Councils are an emerging network of concerned citizens, scientists, and design geeks gathering online and in their local watersheds to activate water restoration and water protection, seeking to help mitigate the looming climatic water cycle crises, both locally and across the planet. Our meetings give people a chance to share the status of their local watersheds, what their most pressing issues are, learn of regenerative projects happening, explore how these solutions are working, and connect with other fellow Water Stewards in their regions.
This gives people a good chance to swap advice, design insights, and support.
Learn how you can participate to activate a Water Steward group in your watershed.
By working together we are stronger. Different communities have different issues like flooding, drought, heat, fires, depleted groundwater, water scarcity, contaminated water, and corporate companies taking water. Yet, there are many solutions already available such as building swales, small check dams, mycelia, curb cuts, rain gardens, greywater systems, wetlands, rainwater catchments, and working to improve our soil’s organic ability to absorb water, . We look at which solutions are successful, in which areas, how to get your neighborhood to implement the most effective projects, and explore how we can dream together to further innovate for more effective methods.
Here are a few examples of watersheds around the world, their issues, and projects:
Byron Bay, Australia experienced floods earlier this year and needs solutions to recover their communities and ecosystems and to lessen the flooding in the future.
North Eastern Cameroon, at Minawao the Refugee Camp, they are working to grow the “Great Green Wall” in Africa, whose intention is to hold back the growth of the Sahara desert. They need design solutions to keep the trees they plant hydrated.
Grass Valley in California needs water design solutions to keep the landscape hydrated by capturing winter rain runoff so as to lessen the wildfires happening there.
……………………………………
Brock Dolman and the Water Institute have put out a guide to help neighborhoods restore their watershed.
Heres an excerpt from their guide
“Watersheds: Our Basin of Relations:
At the most basic level, a watershed encompasses all the land surface that collects and drains water down to a single exit point. The continual cycle of erosive water flowing over uplifting and weathering land has sculpted all landscapes into distinct cradle-like entities known as watersheds, basins, drainages, or catchments. Everyone on the planet lives in a watershed somewhere. Everything we do for work, play, school, shopping, farming, recreation, and so on occurs in a watershed. Watersheds can be as large as the Mississippi basin, the third largest in the world, which drains 41% of the
lower 48 U.S. states into the Gulf of Mexico. Or, watersheds can be as small as all the land in your neighborhood that flows from your yard, roof, driveway, and streets to the storm drain and out to your local creek or lake.
Water is the ultimate resource. Thankfully, the Clean Water Act now recognizes the “pave and pipe paradigm” as disastrously flawed and hydro-illiterate. These outmoded engineering practices capture, concentrate, and convey water away from a site as quickly as possible. The old drain-age is now being replaced by a new retain-age.
The WATER Institute advocates a new paradigm of stormwater management based on “waterspread” restoration, with a call to slow it, spread it, sink it, store it, share it: Slow the water down. Spread the water out. Sink the water into the land. Store the water in the aquifer. Share the water with all of life.
Practical waterspread applications, such as bio-swales and raingardens serve to biologically filter stormwater, enhancing water quality. These applications can also enhance water quantity by optimizing groundwater recharge and reducing peak
flood flows. If you live in a flood plain, these ideas may be more challenging to implement. You will need to evaluate the slope stability, soil porosity, storm event size, and run-off volumes of your site to determine which of these concepts are appropriate. When we learn to think like a watershed, we can implement development practices that will protect water quality and quantity.
For the Water Institute “Basins of Relations” guide see https://oaec.org/publications/basins-relations-citizens-guide-2018/