Preparing for Floods, Droughts and Water Shortages by Working with, Rather than Against, Nature
An almond farm in California’s Central Valley is flooded in the wintertime to replenish groundwater supplies while scientists study the effects on soils, tree health, and water quality. Photo by Joe Proudman/UC Davis
[This piece is an excerpt from the first chapter of my new book, Replenish: The Virtuous Cycle of Water and Prosperity, released this week by Island Press.]
As I wound my way up Poudre Canyon in northern Colorado, the river flowed toward the plains below, glistening in the midday sun. It ran easy and low, as it normally does as the autumn approaches, with the snowmelt long gone. I was struck by the canyon’s beauty, but also by the blackened soils and charred tree trunks that marred the steep mountains all around. They were legacies, I realized, of the High Park Fire that had burned more than 135 square miles (350 square kilometers) of forest during the previous year’s drought.
It was September 7, 2013, and my family and I were heading to my niece’s wedding. Tara and Eric had chosen a spectacular place for their nuptials—Sky Ranch, a high mountain camp not far from the eastern fringe of Rocky Mountain National Park. As we escorted my elderly parents down the rocky path to their seats, I noticed threatening clouds moving in. They darkened as the preacher delivered his homily. Please cut it short and marry them, I thought to myself, before we all get drenched.
The rains held off just long enough. But that day’s brief shower was a prelude to a deluge of biblical proportions that began four days later. A storm system stalled over the Front Range and in less than a week dumped nearly a year’s worth of precipitation in some areas. The Poudre— short for Cache la Poudre—flooded bigger than it had since 1930.
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