In search of a rainwater pond or other catchment guru working in steep mountains.
I've been watching Youtube videos--I particularly like Andrew Millison's videos, but I haven't found one that makes me say--that's US, that's what we need, that's what we can do or anything similar...
I live in a very mountainous region of southern Mexico. We are in a semi-arid zone receiving all our rainfall between May-September traditionally, thought in the last decade is more like June to October and rainfall is becoming more erratic, with very heavy short storms and prolonged dry spells within the rainy season. We've inherited degraded farmland that has been farmed, corn-beans-squash and greens, by my husband's family for as long as 2000 years. (not a typo) In the past 100 years, its also been highly grazed by goats outside of the rainy season crop (as in once the harvest is in the goat herds are allowed to free-range- Also contributing to the degradation was a push in the last 50 years of the 20th century so 1950-2000 to increase corn production as much as possible.
About 18 months ago we signed up for a government program to receive funding for planting
trees, both "reforestation" and converting viable cornfields into fruit trees alley cropped in the cornfield. We have one plot of
land in each, the past year has been a struggle to keep the young trees alive through our dry season. First, we were carrying
water jugs but were still planting more trees until we reached our goal, about 3000 planting in total, though that includes cactus and maguey species that are not watered in the dry season, so let's say 1800 plants that need watering. The size of this
project meant we had to look for other ways to water. My husband is a mathematician and very science-minded. He wants to mechanize and solve the problem with machines. We are currently using fossil fuels to water the trees--first using a
gasoline pump to pump water out of a river that runs year-round in the bottom of the valley. This goes into a tank mounted into a 1982 6-cylinder farm truck that takes it up the mountain into portable tanks where we can then house and/or
bucket it around to the trees. While in theory, the reforestation trees
should only need watering for a couple more years and they are
local species most of the fruit trees will likely require some watering to bring them out of dormancy in time to fruit well during our rainy season.
So that's where I get to ponds. I keep saying to my husband, we need to put in ponds and hold the rainwater on the hilltops and stop using fossil fuels to pull it up from the bottom. (I checked my GPS and it's about 1600 meters above sea-level down there and we take the water as high as 2000 meters above sea level in the highest point and other tanks in the 1800 range.)
So that's why I need a
pond (and other earthworks) guru, but one who can show me examples of ponds in steep mountainous areas. For example, most of the videos coming out of India look seriously flat compared to where we are. So when I show him videos that what he always says--look how flat it is there. That's not going to work for us.
So who is a water harvesting/catchment-making guru has published work--articles, books, videos, etc. that can help me make plans?
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