More than 2,000 tiny dams are turning a Mexican ranch green » Yale Climate Connections
(yaleclimateconnections.org)
SolarpunkIt’s a contrast to the ongoing, unsustainable status quo in Baja California Sur, where wells pump relentlessly from aquifers that recharge slowly. Meanwhile, rapidly growing tourism demands even more water every year. Hotel pools, golf courses, and landscaped resorts are now consuming far more water than local households.
Bours Muñoz advocates for a tourism tax to ensure visitors with excessive consumption habits help pay for much-needed water solutions.
Meanwhile, Rancho La Piedra will continue to demonstrate a radical approach: Instead of drilling deeper, build upward. Instead of pumping harder, slow the flow.
It is not a substitute for infrastructure, regulation, or policy, she said. But it addresses a problem that pipelines and treatment plants cannot easily solve – how to keep rain from disappearing before it becomes groundwater.
It reminds me of similar work with beaver dam analogs.
The small dams they're using sound like check dams, which apparently can do some damage if they're not maintained but I don't know enough of the history there to know how different this is.
Good to see a story about someone who gives a dam.
