Bats Attract for Water Conservation Message

Published October 18, 2009

By Mae Lee Sun
TNAZ Regional Correspondent

Participants in an earthworks workshop led by Emily Brott, of the Sonoran Institute, used ancient technologies to build a basin for rainwater capture at the Ward One Tucson City Council office.
Credit: Sonoran Institute

The late summer launch at dusk of 40,000 Mexican free-tail bats from under a Campbell Avenue bridge.

Two new water-harvesting ordinances to go into effect in January.

A group of volunteers working with landowners to repair the ecosystem in a 70,000-square-mile region of the Southwest known as Sky Island.

These three are faces of conservation science applied for Tucson’s future.

The Sky Island Alliance, for example, is working to bring water back to natural areas endangered by off-road recreation, development and inadequate agricultural practices, said Melanie Emerson, the group’s executive director.

“We’re primarily working with private landowners of large tracts in the region on simple, implementable methods,” she said. “That most definitely includes technology that has been used for millennia like one rock dams and gabions (sand-filled cages).”

The alliance melds the science of conservation biology with on-the-ground restoration done by volunteers.

Efforts to restore grasses and native vegetation have created natural habitat that attract insects, birds and mid- to larger-sized mammals and predators, which in turn Emerson said, has helped revive populations of endangered species like the Chiricahua leopard frog.

Sweat Tech hasn’t changed much since the Hohokam, but tools look different, certainly.
Credit: Sonoran Institute

Emerson said her group “connects the dots” between conservation planning and conservation action.

The City of Tucson is using the law to put conservation into action.

In January, 50 percent of the water used for landscaping commercial buildings must come from water harvesting. Currently, 40 percent of Tucson’s drinking water is being used on landscaping. Emily Brott, project manager for the Sun Corridor Legacy Program of the Sonoran Institute, described water harvesting in Tucson as a process based on the ancient engineering of the Hokoham and Anasazis, who used systems of dams, canals and terracing to ensure their crops had enough water.

“The first line of defense, if you will, is the application of earthworks,” she said. “That means going back to building berms and basins that use gravity to direct the rain where you want it to go.”

She pointed out that this methodology is cheaper than using more costly gutters and cisterns to gather water off roofs.

“If you do your calculations right, you can gather enough … to use only water harvested from monsoon season and rain to water landscaping that consists primarily of native plants,” Brott said.

Instead of watching water run through the streets — which have essentially functioned as gutters — the city is implementing curb cuts to ease flooding and accommodate landscaping in medians and sidewalk areas. As water gets redirected, it eases the buildup of oil, trash and grim that ends up in washes and overloads the ecosystem.

Additionally a second new ordinance calls on all new residential construction to have a gray water stub-out. “Your washing machine, for example, has to be plumbed to bring the water outside, if the homeowner chooses to do so,” Brott said.

Last month, the dusk launch of 40,000 free-tail bats attracted hundreds in Tucson to the banks of the Rillito River. Hosted by the Rillito River Project, water conservation and diversity were the themes, and large, white balloons helped to depict changing water levels.
Credit: Mae Lee Sun

Gray water is wastewater that can be used for irrigation of gardens and other landscaping.

Now, about those bats.

The Rillito River Project, an arts organization, has had at least four presentations to increase awareness of the vanishing rivers of the Southwest, and this September used the summer flight of the bats to draw attention to the region’s water issues.

Before the 40,000 bats took off from under the bridge that spans the Rillito for their nightly feeding of mosquitoes and other insects, local actor Sean Dupont spoke to the crowd gathered in the dry riverbed of the river’s history, offering a sort of water timeline.

“1775, when the Spanish Presidio was established in downtown Tucson, the Rillito River flowed four feet deep,” Dupont said. “There was water in the river where Saint Xavier Mission stands. “

The water table has risen and fallen during the past several hundred years, starting with how the Hohokam harvested water to grow beans, corn and squash, cholla buds and mesquite beans, Dupont said.

With the increase in Anglo settlers and agricultural development, he said, Tucson established a municipal water system in the 1900s — initially through tapping a spring and directing it through gravity feeds that eventually required pump technology to supply volume.

By the 1950s, the water table sunk from 20 feet underground to 75 feet underground.

For more information:
Sonoran Institute (520) 290-0828 www.sonoraninstitute.org
Sky Island Alliance (520) 624-7080 www.skyislandalliance.org
Rillito River Project (520) 955-3429 www.rillitoriverproject.org

Home Grown: Insight into some of Tucson’s green cottage industry makers

By Mae Lee Sun, Inside Tucson Business
Published on Monday, March 02, 2009

For budding green entrepreneurs, it seems to start with an idea.

An idea based on connection with something larger than oneself, where values of sourcing materials sustainably, focusing locally and keeping ethics at the forefront translate into action- action which generates a product or service that will benefit the whole in the long rather than short term and tend to be free of any ties to the larger grid of business as usual.

Despite the state of the economy, the green industry and emerging technology fields are generally on the upswing, especially in Tucson and where down-home ingenuity, creativity and independence have come together in the creation of some cottage industries focusing on such things as landscaping, spices and interior design.

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Brooklyn Pizza gets Smart for delivery

By Mae Lee Sun
Inside Tucson Business
Published on Friday, August 22, 2008

By outward appearances Tony Vaccaro’s Brooklyn Pizza is a normal, successful, pizzeria. The storefront, at 534 N. Fourth Ave., is brightly painted lime-green, orange and black. A small group of hip-looking teenagers crowds around a few chrome café tables on the sidewalk, enthusiastically eating wide slices of thin crusty pizza. It’s a Friday night and Brooklyn Pizza is packed.

Inside, behind the counter, two white-aproned guys and a woman with flour-dusted faces are tossing dough, smearing sauce and dealing pepperoni as fast as they can to keep up with incoming orders. Some of those pizzas are about to be delivered by 21-year-old Fred Bohnen in Brooklyn Pizza’s newly purchased Smart car. Acquiring the car was a weighty financial decision for Vaccaro. As were other environmentally conscious changes.

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Armory Park’s urban farmer and food activist

Downtown Tucsonan
April 2008
By Mae Lee Sun

Some people have an ear for music. Others, like Kim Fox, have an ear for corn. And kale. And tomatoes. As a small-scale urban farmer/food activist, she says it’s a skill that everyone possesses; you don’t have to be a green thumbed Mozart to create luscious and flavorful organic food right in your own backyard while also providing yourself and your neighbors with what she sees as long-term food security.

Read more…link goes to Downtown Tucsonan

The blossoming of Menlo Park’s Linda Avenue

Downtown Tucsonan

Published May 2007

by Mae Lee Sun

ust west of I-10, sandwiched between Congress Street, St. Mary’s Road, and Silverbell Road, sits Menlo Park—one of Tucson’s oldest neighborhoods. Mac Hudson, president of the Menlo Park Neighborhood Association (MPNA) has family who’s lived there for years, although not as long as some residents whose family history in Menlo Park spans multiple generations. Most have gone about their business, working close to Downtown, where access to services like shopping and banking were convenient. When many of those businesses closed in the 70s and 80s, including El Banco, the white building that sat on the corner of Linda Avenue and Congress Street, some residents moved out, leaving older adobe and brick bungalows and former agricultural land to fall into disrepair or be abandoned.

In 2003 however, Hudson, along with a few friends and neighbors, poked around the scrubby, vacant lots, scattered with mesquites and thought these structures could somehow regain their use. One idea they had was to transform a crumbling 1905-era double-brick home with a detached coach house at 17 North Linda Avenue into a community center and public garden. After the house was purchased by Pima County in the 1980s, it served as a residence for county employees, including Ward 1’s present City Council Member, Jose Ibarra.

Hudson says, “Myself, along with other Menlo Park residents and neighborhood association members, formed the Linda Avenue (LA) Subcommittee to talk about what we wanted to see happen with the house and the land. We knew from the beginning, having spoken with past neighborhood leaders who had saved the place from destruction in the 90s that we wanted to honor the architecture and cultural traditions of the past. But we also wanted to be forward-thinking by making Linda Avenue sustainable beyond that, creating a space the neighborhood could use and learn from.”

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