When we walk in our desert mountains, it’s hard to miss the hidden meadows often created by the strangest elements. A fallen tree or boulder can stop water otherwise lost downstream, sinking the water and feeding our watershed’s sprouting trees and grasses. Where before there was nothing, now life begins. Rocks, trees, flood-taken cars, and concrete from some lost foundation, show that nature has the strangest ways of putting water back into its watershed and feeding its diversity.
Humans have many ways to stop and redirect water, too. Roads over our valleys, concrete and steel barriers and dams, and landscape berms and stock tanks are some of the ways we consciously and legally feed the watershed and its wildlife while preventing flooding in the town. We have been doing this effectively for years as ranchers, developers, farmers and residents of this valley. Now, FEMA, as well as a half dozen other federal agencies, would have to approve of any changes in the main drainage we know as Sonoita Creek. Federal and state agencies, as well as insurance companies, can legally prevent any major changes in residential, county, or town floodways. Neighbors downstream have grounds for lawsuits if they can prove others have denied them access to otherwise free flowing water due to a simple landscape berm. Yet we walk in our hills and see how nature won’t be stopped and neither will we from slowing the water down upstream higher in the mountains to prevent the town from floods and feeding our watershed. There seems to be an understanding amongst the mountains and its people that, although it can be problematic preventing the free flow of surface water, it is necessary for our collective survival.
Our valley’s incredible natural wealth has prompted numerous studies aiming at exploiting that wealth. Here lies a gray area of interpretation, and thus direction, as to how to use this wealth. Studies on the hydrology and geology of our valley are essential in deciding which higher valleys would be targeted for diversions and dirt tanks if ever local and federal governments decide to tackle both flood prevention and watershed building. The Patagonia Town Council has asked us all to lend our study data and expertise to this double duty cause. Studies aimed at targeting one another will waste time and resources trying to legally claim fault in crisis when we should have been taking the time to collectively conserve and proactively work with our water now. Each of us can do something right now either in the conservation, organization, and/or implementation of watershed strengthening activities. Everyday decisions by business owners, land owners and residents will make the difference to the future of this watershed.
If folks are moved to join one of the environmental organizations, to add to the data collection by monitoring and recording one’s own well and surface water, or are professionals who want to see a collective effort like this happen, then let’s work
together to keep the water in our hills.