Training in Urban Stream Restoration

Watershed Management Group (WMG)* is planning a 3-day hands on short course in urban stream restoration this fall in Tucson.  If you or anyone you know might have an interest in this the info is below:

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Technical Training in Urban Stream Restoration with Watershed Management Group, October 6-8, 2011, in Tucson, AZ

Apply by August 1 for Reduced Course Fee!

Join Watershed Management Group (WMG) for a 3-day, hands-on course in Stream Restoration through the Watershed Technical Trainings program.  This course will provide participants with a basic understanding of how desert streams and arroyos function, how they change over time, and the human influence on them, both positive and negative.  Based on this foundation, students will participate in hands-on sessions in site assessment, design, and implementation of small-scale restoration features.  Emphasis will be placed on urban wash restoration approaches and practices from backyard to larger drainage scales.

The course curriculum includes:

·  Classroom lectures

·  Site assessment, surveying, design, and planning sessions

·  Hands-on restoration workshops

·  Tour of local restoration sites

Apply early for the reduced registration fee by August 1, 2011; application deadline for the regular registration fee is September 1, 2011.  To view the full course announcement and download an application, visit WMG's Watershed Technical Training webpage.  For more information, please contact Tory Syracuse at tsyracuse@watershedmg.org or 520-396-3266.

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* While I am a board member with WMG I derive no financial benefit from any of the work they do, only the satisfaction of seeing them be successful.

Sweet, wonderful rain!

The monsoon arrived in So. Arizona on schedule over the 4th of July weekend.  We received more rain at my house during the past week than we had received during the previous 7 months - almost 1.5 inches.  See how much fell in your neighborhood at www.rainlog.org.

Trying to re-discover my focus

I've had a number of things swirling in my brain for the last few months (being shoved out of the way several times by exogenous factors) but have been waiting to find some sort of motivation or focus to help them coalesce into a cogent written form.  In the meantime, I'll just take the route of some of my fellow water-bloggers and shoot out some quick updates.

Many of the readers of this blog probably already know this but for any who don't, David Zetland, of Aguanomics, recently released his first book - self-published no less - called "The End of Abundance: Economic Solutions to Water Scarcity."  David's a very bright guy and I'm sure his book includes some outstanding insight into water allocation problems, including actual solutions, and the dry wit that he is known for.  Should be an excellent read and I'm hoping to get a copy for myself before my vacation in August. 

But for the moment I'm working through Jamie Workman's recent book, "Heart of Dryness," about the struggles of the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert and how the indigenous wisdom of drought-adapted societies can help modern humanity cope with coming water shortages.  I'm a few chapters in right now and it's a very compelling narrative Jamie presents.  Of particular interest to me are the similarities I see between the Bushmen - their interactions with outsiders, struggles to maintain their traditional way of life, and the failure of those outsiders to learn important lessons from ancient cultures - and some of the traditional Native American cultures of the Southwest.  I had the opportunity to meet Jamie in Tucson a few months back and really enjoyed talking about our mutual passion for changing existing paradigms in water management to deal with scarcity.

A few things I'm hoping to compose some thoughts on in the near future:

• Response within the Arizona water management community to the CAP proposal for allocating new water supplies by a market-clearing auction.  This was a novel and interesting proposal that was given a less-than-warm reception when released almost 9 months ago. 
• The recent US Supreme Court opinion in Montana v. Wyoming that has important implications for the significance of return flows in interstate river compacts.
• The prospects for future Indian water rights settlements in Arizona - essentially, not especially good right now.

In memoriam, Steve Brooks, 1959-2011

My brother Steve passed away recently, losing his battle with cancer.  Steve was both my inspiration and my nemesis at various points in my life.  He was the reason I went to school to become a hydrologist (he was already in the masters program at University of Arizona when I entered to pursue my BS).  I followed him into consulting in Arizona, where I was forever known as "Steve's younger brother" within much of the local hydrology community.  At times I think I may have left consulting to go to law school as a concession that I would never be as good a hydrogeologist as he was.  But the reality is, he had things he was really good at - computer modeling and theory - and I had things I was very good at - field hydrogeology and policy.  In the end I came to the understanding that he pushed me at times to make myself better at what I did (which I often resented), but ultimately I would not be where I am today without his influence in my life.  I am a better person both professionally and personally because he took the time to care about me and where I was going with my life.  I owe him a huge debt of gratitude that I was never very good at expressing.  I hope he occasionally looks down on me and smiles at my accomplishments.

Quick follow-up on Rainwater Harvesting legislation in AZ

I recently posted about a piece of legislation being considered in Phoenix that first would have created a new water right to harvested rainwater, then was modified to create a state commission to study the practice of rainwater harvesting and how it could be used to augment renewable water supplies.  Just to keep you up to date, I recently learned that the bill, SB1522, didn't make it out of the legislature this year.  According to an article in the Prescott paper, the bill was held up in committee by the committee head who says he just doesn't like study committees.  Maybe next year they'll try to move it through a different committee.

King in Waiting says "Lay off the beef!"

Prince Charles was speaking at a conference at Georgetown this week (taking a break from the royal wedding festivities, I suspect) to tell Americans that our fondness for dead cow is seriously straining the worlds water supplies.  He's absolutely correct, that the amount of water needed to produce each pound of beef is almost outrageously disproportionate to the value of the nutrition produced.  But I suspect that if you did a similar calculation of the amount of water needed to grow the grains to produce a fifth of gin or a pound of almonds it would look similarly disproportionate [I did a quick check online - 1) the numbers reported vary widely by source; 2) I didn't find any reported numbers for water used in the production of gin and the numbers I found for almonds were not useful].  Another thing is that probably 1,900 gallons of the 2,000 needed to produce the beef is used to irrigate the feed and if we didn't eat the beef we would still need to be fed so that 1,900 gallons of water would probably still be used to irrigate something.

If you look at trends for beef consumption and water use in the US for recent decades, it's clear that beef consumption is down and water consumption is flat.  So maybe he's preaching to the choir in this country.  What would really be helpful would be to convince people in the rapidly developing parts of the world that as they grow richer, greatly increasing their meat consumption is going to put enormous strains on their water supplies, which generally are pretty poorly managed at present.  If they want to avoid significant negative environmental consequences of economic development it would be smart to manage water supplies in such a way that the majority of their water isn't used to grow food for animals that will be fed to people - especially if the people they are being fed to live in other countries.

Finally ... I don't really appreciate members of the one of the wealthiest families in the world telling me what I should eat.  I'm a commoner, living in a constitutional democracy, that's just how I feel.

Making some changes

I'm trying to play around with the design within the confines of Blogger.  I'm not convinced I like the result and might consider moving to a different platform.  If any of my 3 or 4 readers has an opinion I'd appreciate if you let me know.  And if you have a favorite blogging platform that I should check out let me know about that too.