CIVIL ENGINEER RICARDO AGUIRRE RETHINKS STORMWATER MANAGEMENT
Holistic management of grazing animals can restore the land so that it soaks up the water.
“When I went to college and then graduate school, I drank the Kool-Aid in terms of what civil engineers were supposed to do and how to manage stormwater. We were taught to treat water like a nuisance. The only tools that we were given was a pipe, a channel and a hole in the ground. I didn't know any better.”
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Ricardo Aguirre is a civil engineer based in Arizona. He is one of the very few civil engineers who seeks to treat stormwater as a resource, not a nuisance. He seeks to reduce runoff and therefore flooding, by causing water to soak into the ground, which is a tremendous storehouse for water, and a place where water can do a lot of good.
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HART HAGAN: Ricardo, you have a ranch in Arizona, tell us about your Ranch and what you're doing there.
RICARDO AGUIRRE: I'm the fifth generation here in Arizona. Three generations ago, my grandfather and great-grandfather had eight to ten thousand head of cattle and several ranches between here and Mexico.
We are going through family transition planning with my mother, taking what is left and working with W.E.S.T. Consultants, my employer. They have seen the vision that I put in front of them, in terms of developing a Land Management Service line.
W.E.S.T. has invested in an eight acre piece of property that used to be my family's horse pasture. It's adjacent to Interstate 10. We have great contracts with a land holding company where we used to raise cotton, and we now manage cattle.
We have control of 300 acres where we are practicing nature based systems. It's a learning laboratory. It's conveniently located, literally 30 seconds off Interstate 10 between Phoenix and Tucson.
We want to educate people so they can see animals and they can see how we are converting desertified land back to grasslands, showing how we can resolve a serious water crisis here in Arizona, in the Southwest.
HART HAGAN: You have restored your home landscape to one that captures most or all of the rainfall. Describe what you've done there.
RICARDO AGUIRRE: I came back home to where I grew up. My journey started when my son was born and I wanted to make sure that I left a legacy behind for him and his generation, where he and his contemporaries and future generations are able to enjoy the same or better resources that you and I enjoy today. It's this vision of making sure that we leave this place in a better situation than it was when I showed up. One of the chief resources--the catalyst for life--is water.
When I went to college and then graduate school, I drank the Kool-Aid in terms of what civil engineers were supposed to do and how to manage stormwater.
We were taught to treat water like a nuisance. The only tools that we were given was a pipe, a channel and a hole in the ground. I didn't know any better.
Growing up on the farm, under conventional farming practice, chemical management, pumping groundwater and irrigating water-intensive crops like cotton and alfalfa, I really didn't know any better. Even at that time--about 12 years ago--we were facing a serious crisis.
Even back in the 80s we were facing a serious crisis. That's why Arizona has laid out the Groundwater Management Act. But now that's being threatened.
I studied rainwater harvesting. I got certified 12 years ago with an organization called Watershed Management Group. I got certified in water harvesting.
They taught three things.
One was Earthworks. That's to create depressions and to put vegetation in those depressions. You're capturing water off the roof.
Secondly, greywater, which is the secondary reuse for the bathroom, for shower water and for laundry. That way the water is not going into the sewer, but it's actually going to go out to irrigate.
Then finally, rainwater cisterns. I was collecting about 8,000 gallons of water and was able to use that for irrigating the landscape.
Then it really opened up when I started studying “Holistic Management” and the relationship between soil organic matter and soil’s water holding capacity.
In other words, soil life acts like a sponge. It's important to understand that for every 1% of soil organic matter, the land is able to retain anywhere from 20 to 60 thousand gallons of water per acre. So if you go to 2%, then that's 120. If you go to 3%, that's 180. We're looking to demonstrate A Soup To Nuts of how we can capture, store and establish long-term water security for future generations.
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For the entire conversation with Ricardo Aguirre, please click on the link to the YouTube video.