80 Acres: Earth Day 2016, Part 1

[e_moon60]

Comments

[coalboy]

Echoing bravi.

[cdozo]

You've done so well by your land. It's looking really good.

Keeping water onsite and filtering it is so important. If I could teach the city of Austin one thing, it would probably be that. It seems to me that the main goal of the city is to get storm water into the river as quickly as possible. Pollutants and filtering be damned.

[e_moon60]

Same problem here...people hate wetlands, cite dangers from mosquitoes & floods...they don't want water except coming out of pipes.

[cdozo]

It's happening all over the country. Even places that get a lot of rain have lost enough groundwater to cause problems - http://water.usgs.gov/edu/gwdepletion.html.

And don't get me started on the Waller Creek Tunnel project. It's going to add to my flood risk here. They are running all flood water directly into the river during wet times and then they'll pump river water uphill to create year-round creek flow - http://www.austintexas.gov/department/waller-creek-tunnel.

[e_moon60]

That's supremely stupid. Of course a city already built up (IOW without foresight earlier on) doesn't have a lot of room to make a wetland reservoir, but it could, instead of burying streams to cause downstream flooding, widen the stream corridors and build retention dams to hold water back and restore some groundwater replenishment.

The rules on max hardscape make sense, but every neighborhood should have an area designated for recovery.

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[ann_mcn]

Fascinating! It's revival and resurrection.

[green_knight]

As always, thanks for sharing. This is such an inspiring project and so very needed as a counterpoint to widespread hostile practices.