Phyllis Tichinin supports WWUs approach to bringing environmental sanity to CHBs water use practices

I fully support the work of Wise Water Use to bring science, environmental sanity and equity to CHB’s water use practices. The continuing push for a large dam for CHB to ‘solve our water problems’ demonstrates the proponents’ lack of understanding of soil and ecosystem function.

If you want our local waters and environment to further degrade, the best thing to do is to invest heavily in a dam instead of facilitating the natural flow of water through our landscape. Natural flow of water occurs when there is continuous green plant cover and a living carbon sponge protecting all our soils. When we have a soil carbon sponge the rain infiltrates rapidly, is stored in the soil and substrate for gradual release to streams and the aquifer, and ultimately to the ocean.

The problem is that chemical agriculture and over tilling/over grazing has killed off soil microbiology and burned up the soil carbon sponge. Without a healthy soil carbon sponge we are drought prone, and when rain does fall it runs off causing rapid river rise that takes out roads and robs us of precious soil.

Instead of investing tens of millions in a dam to inequitably distribute irrigation water, spend the money on re-afforesting all the upper reaches of our drainage catchments in permanent mixed native species, and help farmers learn how to farm more productively on fewer inputs for more profit while growing their soil carbon sponge – the basis of a healthy environment and society.

We don’t need expensive tech fixes to the irrigation water or aquifer recharge problem. We need more forests to hold soil and pull down more rain. We need soils that are encouraged to do their job of absorbing, holding and cleansing water for use of the entire landscape, including us. But the rights of the landscape to its water life-blood come first….then and only then will there be plenty of water for all wise, environmentally attuned uses.