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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 12:54:04 EDT
Subject: Ancient Technology Battles Drought
Ancient Technology Battles Drought
.c The Associated Press
By JOSEPH B. VERRENGIA
CASCABEL, Ariz. (AP) -- As monuments go, Barbara Clark's desert dams are so
innocuous that even she has trouble finding them. Even with a map.
``Where the heck are you?'' she hollers into the mesquite as her pickup truck
barrels and bucks up the parched stream bed of the ephemeral Rio San Pedro.
Steering with her knees, Clark ignores the brambles lashing the windshield
and deftly rolls a cigarette from a gallon plastic bag of tobacco jiggling on
her lap.
She's far from lost. There's only one way in and out of this remote, wild
crease in the Santa Catalina Mountains, located two hours east of Tucson's
lush green golf courses and sprawling suburbs. Fifty miles from the border,
its a place where American Top 40 and Mexican salsa radio collides and
dissolves in a cloud of static.
``They're just lee-tle, lee-tle piles of rocks,'' Clark explains, craning her
neck through the cloud of blue smoke. ``We do the best with what we've got
out here.''
And rocks are about all that's left. With them, Clark aims to slow precious
floodwater and break the grip of a harsh drought before it wrings the last
gasp from a slice of the Sonora Desert that has been grazed, smelted, eroded,
irrigated and developed since the Spanish conquistador Coronado launched his
quest for Eldorado up this same dry wash in 1539.
Many water utilities and corporate farmers from California to Florida have
responded to the crisis by pumping more of their stored water from reservoirs
and aquifers.
But Clark, a 50-year old potter and self-described hippie homesteader, is
trying to meld the simple technologies of ancient Indian watercourses with
'60s-style community activism.
Over the past three years, she has organized valley neighbors, volunteers and
hired hands to assemble 5,200 tiny loose-rock dams at key junctures around a
10,000-acre parcel in the San Pedro watershed.
The dams' function is not to impound water, but slow its downhill dash and
encourage more of it to seep into the earth.
And just in time. Conditions are the driest in the 30 years Clark has been
living along the San Pedro.
A close inspection reveals the dams are assembled according to a design
developed by the Hohokam, pueblo Indians who first farmed this wash 1,000
years ago. Two dozen stones nestle in the shape of an arrowhead across a
narrow gulch.
While the design is native in origin, Clark uses the same vocabulary as the
engineers who dammed the West's great rivers with concrete and steel barriers
as tall as skyscrapers.
Straddling the ditch, Clark tosses back her long, gray braid and undertakes a
few simple repairs.
In the center of the channel she places the keystone, a rock the size of a
basketball. Then she surrounds it with riprap, or smaller rubble. The
structure forms a small V.
Runoff is channeled over the center of the dam, or the spillway. It flows
gently downhill across the dam's apron.
With her skilled potters' hands, Clark snuggles the rocks close to avoid
creating sharp angles that will only agitate the water or, worse, create a
waterfall, and encourage more erosion.
Do her dams work? Clark answers with a shrug.
``This valley is so beautiful and its about the only one left that isn't
trashed,'' Clark said. ``You can build all the dams in the world, but if you
don't incorporate them into the landscape, it'll just lead to more erosion.
Over the next 10 years, we'll see if these little guys do any good.''
AP-NY-04-18-99 1253EDT
Copyright 1998 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP
news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise
distributed without prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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