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Basins of Relations: Protecting and Restoring Our Watersheds

By Brock Dolman
Occidental Art and Ecology Centers WATER Institute

Welcome to Planet Water
It is the copious presence of water on our blue and white planet that provides for the fundamental expression of lifes diversity and beauty. Water ripples out and within to touch every aspect of our lives. Currently and increasingly in the very near future, there will be nothing more valuable than pristine watersheds with abundant pure water supplies.
The ceaseless flowing and dynamic processes of waterthe evaporation, condensation, transpiration, sublimation, precipitation, and infiltration that together comprise the water cycleare truly amazing. Water is a substance that covers more than 70% of Earths surface, can be a solid (ice) that floats on its liquid self, which in turn can evaporate into the atmosphere as a vaporous distilled gas, and then can return purified to Earth as either a solid snow or liquid rain. Without water there would likely be no life on Planet Earth. From this perspective it may be more fitting, as suggested by biologist Lynn Margulis, to refer to our home as Planet Water.

Approximately 97% of the worlds water by volume is held in the salty oceans and thus is undrinkable. Another 2% of the worlds water is locked up in ice caps and glaciers. This leaves only 1% of the worlds water, at any one time, available as fresh water in lakes, rivers, and accessible groundwater for shared use by humans and all other freshwater-dependent beings. As sea levels rise due to global warming, the melting of polar ice caps and glaciers is increasing the percentage of water that is in the saline ocean. As we drain wetlands, clearcut forests, plow soils, and pave over our watersheds we further reduce our available 1% of fresh water. Additionally, our widespread polluting of aquifers, rivers, lakes, and the air dramatically reduces the quality of this critically limited clean fresh water available for human and environmental needs.
We must learn how to equitably and sustainably share the remaining less than 1% of available global fresh water for all agricultural, residential, manufacturing, energy, and personal needs, as well as the biological needs of all other terrestrial and aquatic life forms. Jacques Cousteau reminds us not to forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one. Every drop of water is precious!

Watersheds: Our Basins of Relations

At the most basic level, a watershed encompasses all the land surface area 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 interchangeably 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, somewhere. 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 they can functionally be as small as all the area in your neighborhood that collects water flowing from your yard, roof, driveway, and streets to the storm drain and on to your local creek or lake.

Watersheds at all scales are evolved living entities whose state of health provides a comprehensive benchmark for judging the wisdom of our past and future land- and water-use practices. Watersheds literally underlie all human endeavors and form the foundation for all future human aspirations and survival. Watersheds topographically define community, and the health of your watershed depends on collaborative relations among neighbors in your shared basin. Watershed is the geographic synonym for sustainability.
Conservation Hydrology

We are calling our philosophical and practical responses to the water challenges and opportunities before us Conservation Hydrology. This concept utilizes the disciplines of ecology, population biology, biogeography, economics, anthropology, philosophy, planning, and history to guide community-based watershed literacy, planning, and action. Conservation Hydrology advocates that human development decisions must move from a dehydration model to a rehydration model.

The opportunity before us is to retrofit existing practices and design new development patterns based on principles of rehydration and regeneration instead of dehydration and degradation. Water is the ultimate resource, not the problem. Thankfully at a national level, as part of the Clean Water Act, the pave & pipe paradigm engineering practices of capturing, concentrating, and conveying water away from a site as quickly as possible are now recognized as disastrously flawed and hydro-illiterate. The old drain-age is now being replaced by a new retain-age.

Were advocating a new paradigm of stormwater management based on waterspread restoration, with a call to slow it, spread it, sink it: Slow the water down, spread the water out, and sink the water into the land. Practical waterspread applications, such as bioswales and raingardens, serve to biologically filter stormwater, thereby enhancing water quality. These applications can also enhance water quantity through optimizing groundwater recharge and reducing peak flood flows. For those who live in a floodplain area, these ideas may be more challenging to implement. Thorough site-specific evaluations of slope stability, soil porosity, storm event size, run-off volumes, and amount of imperviousness are critical measures when assessing the site-appropriateness of these concepts. When we think like a watershed, we can transform development practices in order to protect water quality and quantity.

What You Can Do by Working on Water at Different Scales

Watershed issues provide us many avenues for involvement at multiple levels and time scales. Some solutions are small and only require making different choices as an individual or family, which can be done today in your home or yard. Other solutions are more complex to successfully implement, requiring neighborhood, local community, or city-level behavior changes and broad-based participation over some years. There also exists a whole class of democratic opportunities for social policy change that must be implemented at the county, state, and national levels to set in motion changes in water security for future generations. The next section offers ideas for how to strategically increase your participation with water security at the home, community, and national levels.

Water Conservation: Choose not to use!

Practicing water conservation by reducing your demands for water is one of the most powerful acts we can individually and collectively do. Water conservation has a cascade of positive effects and can influence the overall quantity and quality of available fresh water. Every gallon of water you choose not to use equals one gallon not taken from your river or aquifer. It means that one gallons worth of electricity to pump it and chemicals to make it potable are not needed. It means that one gallon is not being degraded into waste water, additionally not needing electricity to pump it, treat it, and dispose of it in our environment. Choosing not to use water saves water quantity and quality, saves energy, saves money, helps reduce demands on our watersheds, and helps to mitigate climate change-induced water stresses by reducing the collective water footprint of humankind.

You Can Organize Your Basin of Relation

We are perched on the tipping point of a watershed moment. From the global scale to the local scale we are faced with a multitude of issues and decisions that will determine the future that our children inherit. The time is now for our communities to come together to set in motion plans and processes that ensure our watersheds will remain healthy in perpetuity. Viewing your watershed as a shared basin of relation allows you and your neighbors to truly define the boundaries of your community and to organize around meaningful issues of true and lasting local social security. Each process, like every watershed and its associated community, is unique. Often you will find that certain local, city, county, state, and federal jurisdictions are ready and waiting to collaborate with these efforts. In the absence of buy-in and support by the local community, it may be impossible to achieve measurable objectives and resource management goals, especially in areas where the majority of the land is in private ownership.

You Can Work for Systemic Political/Policy Changes for Water Security

Considering the importance of water, involving yourself in the politics of water resources is critically important. Do you know the members of your local city, county, or regional Water Board, Irrigation District, Planning Commission, Board of Supervisors, or City Council? State and federal legislators? How do they make decisions and have you participated in the democratic process of helping them make decisions? Have you ever thought about running for a local office yourself?

Ultimately lasting change will have to occur via the arenas of politics and democratic decision-making. We the People are responsible for water-sane policies and laws through our legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Metaphorically you could conceive of these three branches as expressions of social sub-watersheds: at their confluence the expression of health of the mainstream is only as good as the health of each contributing sub-watershed branch. It is our collective responsibility to participate in making sure each branch of our democratic structure is adequately crafting mutually supportive conditions to care for our collective water resources.

Your Home Basin of Relations is your living Lifeboat. There are many things you can do to help. Together we can make a difference. Yes, we can!
This article is excerpted from the 20-page OAEC WATER Institute publication called Basins of Relations: A Citizens Guide to Protecting and Restoring our Watersheds.
Available at www.oaecwater.org.