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Bifferer t1_iy806jt wrote

Several years ago I read a story about another person in India that built small, simple dams across the drainage ditches. When it rains each dam would create a mini reservoir behind it and after the heavy rains, the water would remain there instead of running off. This would allow the aquifer below to recharge. I think they called these little reservoirs wadi- or something like that. All of this shows that small contributions can add up to big results!

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BarbequedYeti t1_iy89t1l wrote

> All of this shows that small contributions can add up to big results

Totally agree. It’s so easy to overlook in this day of instant gratification we are living in a world built off of small victories achieved over 1000’s of years.

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Zoomwafflez t1_iy96dnm wrote

I was watching a doc about a guy in Australia doing something similar, just making little 1-2 foot dirt ridges along his property perpendicular to the slope, tiny pools of water would build up behind each one and in just a few years all kind of trees and shrubs were growing along each ridge and the groundwater was being replenished.

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dalumbr t1_iy9tcuq wrote

Permaculture!

It's wild how this sort of thing isn't discussed more with so many issues being tied back to water scarcity and desertification

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LiedAboutKnowingMe t1_iy9z5hm wrote

A lot of the people involved were pretty right adjacent in the beginning and when MAGA/Q came it bit a lot of permies. Paul Wheaton talking about women, queers, and libs was never pleasant but after MAGA came around I no longer wanted to hear his voice.

I have started finding new ways to talk about permaculture because now when I interact with people they often already have a negative connotation with that word.

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Waste_Return_3038 t1_iyaerl4 wrote

The suggested videos when I first was learning about permaculture were very strange, I think you just explained it. Cheers 🤣

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LiedAboutKnowingMe t1_iybvf74 wrote

Yes! The next video auto plays and suddenly I am watching Nazi Ken and Barbie who went to get back in touch with their aryan roots while doing their best to make sure white children won’t be outnumbered.

Like wow. I’m just here to learn about soil restoration with limited resource input.

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CantHideFromGoblins t1_iyaj6d6 wrote

I once read this book about some climatologist who would plant these tiny grass saplings in the desert. But it was a super hot and arid desert with just loose sand. So he built this small metal plate on a stick that was super simple and he could mass produce in his garage. But anyways he’d plant the grass and bury the plate beneath it with only a tiny bit stick out. And the plate would get extremely hot during the day, but in the night it would retain the heat into the coldest part to let the grass survive. Then it would get cold so once the morning started again it would condense any moisture in the air that would then water the grass. They were self sufficient once in the ground so he just went wild planting them everywhere until the government had to intervene as it started damaging the wildlife that live inside the desert

He was also assassinated or something before his work was finished idk

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TealSkies44 t1_iyar4b5 wrote

This is fascinating, do you remember the name of the book or any google-able search words I could use to try to find it?

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CantHideFromGoblins t1_iyb9hjp wrote

There was a biography book called Dune, although it’s much more about this other guy trying to find a way to make the climatologists dream a reality and the politics of it since he was the son of some rich guy or something. I think they made the book into a documentary recently but they only covered the first half which annoyed a lot of people

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practically_floored t1_iy98c0i wrote

Wadi means river or watercourse in Arabic. It shows up in a lot of place and river names, you notice it as "guada" in Spanish.

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neekseni t1_iy9tb1b wrote

>Wadi means river or watercourse in Arabic.

Watercourse yes, as in water channel or riverbed, but river not really. The original meaning of the word is valley

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practically_floored t1_iy9yqsi wrote

It's used a lot for dry riverbeds that become rivers during floods in places like the UAE. But in for example Spain it's used in names of actual rivers, for example Guadalquivir, Guadiana, Guadiaro etc

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t00oldforthisshit t1_iyanda1 wrote

Like the connection between "cricks" and "hollers" in Appalachian American English

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Mastercat12 t1_iy9rec0 wrote

A lot of mesopotamian aqueducts and dams wer destroyed by the mongols. This caused a lot of draughts and water eradication. If we water to stay in certain areas we have to build structures to help it. Water stays where there is a lot of water due to being a good heat sink. It takes a lot energy to boil and evaporate water. Water engineering can save regions and have hand over fist investments.

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ibrakeforewoks t1_iy995u1 wrote

Restoring and preserving wetlands next to streams is essential. Like you said they soak up water during the wet season like a sponge and release it like a back into the stream system.

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ominous_anonymous t1_iy9nki7 wrote

If you look up "water bunds" it is a very similar concept!

https://www.dutchwatersector.com/news/bunds-are-doing-their-job-regreening-kenya-and-reducing-flooding

>Bunds are pits in the ground in the shape of a crescent moon

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/18/world/gallery/bunds-land-restoration-tanzania-northern-ireland-climate-scn-spc-intl

>Bunds are simple structures that have been used for thousands of years to keep a liquid in or out. In Kuku, southern Kenya, they have been used as a water management strategy to revive and regreen degraded land.

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jmlinden7 t1_iy98r5f wrote

This isn't viable in many places though because the people downstream of you have a right to your runoff

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Gschu54 t1_iy8k8u9 wrote

>instead of running off

Runoff to where. It's illegal to collect rainwater in the US for a reason. That water doesn't just disappear.

Stuff like this needs to be evaluated by civil and environmental engineers

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AwesoMegan t1_iy8lc95 wrote

The point is that it's staying in a smaller area so it can drain slowly into the ground, instead of running off parched hydrophobic soil to a far away spot. It restores groundwater locally by slowing the drainage and allowing plants to grow there.

It's also not illegal to collect rainwater in many places there's just limits as to how much you can collect and store at once.

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topcheesehead t1_iy8lzhw wrote

It's illegal to that but not this

Arizona is going through a historic drought and we are letting our public officials steal from the people of Arizona

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/11/03/when-saudi-arabia-comes-to-town-and-buys-all-your-water/#:~:text=Since%202014%2C%20the%20Saudi%20company,Arabia%20to%20feed%20their%20cattle.

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tekalon t1_iy8v99c wrote

Usually runoff to a nearby river, taking a lot of soil nutrients with it.

Many engineers know about it, the 'problem' is that it takes a lot of time, unused land and man/machine labor to build. If OP and I watched the same documentary, it took a whole village months to build these wadis in areas that weren't being used. Other places that similar techniques are being used on private land for those that are willing to spend the time to experiment based on the needs of that area.

In the US there are beaver relocation programs - beavers don't build wadis but they do build reservoirs and wetlands that give the same result. Same downsides. Beavers can build in areas that can cause flooding and damage to other infrastructure. Identifying areas that would benefit having beavers building dams and the relocation process take time, effort, coordination and money to complete.

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BafangFan t1_iy8zl5q wrote

This one guy in Arizona is doing a pretty good job for his neighborhood. Everyone could do a little something themselves and it would make a big difference

https://youtu.be/KcAMXm9zITg

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GonWithTheNen t1_iyakezv wrote

When I visited the video I thought, "Oh, 52 minutes? I'll just watch a bit." But here I am an hour later after watching the whole thing. :p

Brad and his brother began something brilliant, and it's a joy to see that Brad is still going at it - still with the same infectious joy and energy! It's amazing seeing how lush Dunbar Spring has become.

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it200219 t1_iy8ksdi wrote

could be more regulatory than env. for the US. If you are not using env. purpose where it goes underground it's fair but you store it in a container or your own well then you may be in trouble. Heard from a colleague who comes from farmer family

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dreamWeaver82 t1_iy8z3m5 wrote

It is not illegal in the US. Maybe it's illegal in your state or county but not mine. Here we use rain barrels because we have too much rain for our sewers to handle.

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MisledMuffin t1_iy98k63 wrote

This is exactly what we do in developed nations as well. We build large artificial recharge basins, direct runoff in cities to flowerbeds designed to infiltrate water, build retention basins underneath large stadiums, etc. There are a lot of innovative techniques out there to try to get water back into the ground after you cover it in pavement and houses!

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Dsphar t1_iy9carb wrote

They don't even need to be large. My neighborhood has two curb cutouts per driveway. One is for the driverway itself; the other smaller one opens into a 3-foot-long divet in the parkstrip grass. Street runnoff fills those little divets up before making its way to the conventional storm drain system.

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MisledMuffin t1_iy9ct1z wrote

Exactly, doing little things like that helps manage runoff and better maintain our water resources. When done right you might not even know it's there.

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KokopelliOnABike t1_iy8rbjm wrote

These are small standing bodies of water so my first concern would be about mosquitoes and the diseases they carry. I didn't see anything in the article so I'm curious if anyone knows how or is, that situation being handled?

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bwclark22 t1_iy8svuw wrote

Civil Engineer here, the way the article reads it looks like rather than standing bodies of water, the village is creating what we would call a “retention pond” a depression in the earth that collects and stores rainwater runoff rather than it flowing elsewhere off site. I do not know the calculations that went into this but we would normally assess the soil make-up and the infiltration rate those soils have. We could then calculate how quickly the water in the pond will drain down after a storm event. So long as it’s quicker than 72 hours, this typically is assumed mosquitos will not have enough time to develop in that body of water. These retention ponds are common practice on sites and developments in the US as they allow the storm runoff to be treated and infiltrate into the ground.

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Heis5 t1_iy976e4 wrote

Woah that was an awesome read. Thank you for the explanation to that problem

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maaseru t1_iy8l3h5 wrote

Is this the same as when they dig holes in the ground to help revive the soil?

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FalseAxiom t1_iy9nskr wrote

I'm working in roadway design and love this kind of practice! Our modern roadways redirect way too much water downstream leaving large swaths of drier than usual land while eroding out the stream beds that they release into. I'm trying to convince my coworkers to start adding small microponds or bioretention cells to help treat the water and infiltrate it back into the land. It's the next step in green transportation infrastructure design imo.

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mrcatboy t1_iy9demk wrote

Nestle: OwO what's this?

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PM_ME_YOUR_MESMER t1_iy8su31 wrote

Nestle: I smell freedom! It's about time these savages learned how to be civilized!

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random_shitter t1_iy9k1vr wrote

A whike ago I stumbled over the Paani Foundation who are reaping massive results with a program like this.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=09PGpYZlhrw

Meanwhile, in Spain they're still battling desertification with the proven unsuccesful method of monoculture grid tree planting...

We already have many solutions, if only we would implement them better...

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upstateduck t1_iy9lsek wrote

another reason we need more beavers. The landscape and groundwater , especially in the arid west US would benefit greatly from getting close to historical beaver populations

Great book called "Eager" about the issue/history

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kreese1911 t1_iy9yrod wrote

Omg....at first I thought it said they found 3,500 bodies in the water. Extremely happy that was not the case.

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sinmantky t1_iybqrr9 wrote

yeah, maybe they could have set a different wording for the uninformed...

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iPod3G t1_iy94uj7 wrote

At first, I thought an article about low water levels was going to be about how 3500 bodies had been found.

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comeonwhatdidIdo t1_iyanbxn wrote

Respect the man. The commitment and patience. It's not easy to convince people to do things like this, truly respect the man a lot.

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Im2uber t1_iya5cje wrote

Nestle would like to know your location

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don3dm t1_iy9jm16 wrote

Sweet! Now do Detroit!

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FLORI_DUH t1_iy9rfxh wrote

Why is every post on this sub the opposite of uplifting news?

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[deleted] t1_iy8cmth wrote

[deleted]

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Wh1sk3yt4ng0f0xtr0t t1_iy8e7d7 wrote

Not in the mood to read the article today, are we?

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Jhuderis t1_iy8hdn4 wrote

My morning brain turned the title into a dude looking for water but discovering 3500 bodies.

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Buck_Thorn t1_iy8jgef wrote

I read it. I saw "digging water bodies", "digging ponds", "digging pits".

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