Piped Swale Crossings
Conservation, Earth Banks, Irrigation, Land, Soil Conservation, Storm Water, Swales, Waste Water, Water Harvesting — by Geoff Lawton November 13, 2010
Permaculture is a connecting system between disciplines and elements in a matrix of design, and swales are a mainframe element. The efficiency of swales is that they can interrupt water surface flow high in a landscape where it is then infiltrated relatively quickly, on contour, and moves incredibly slowly through the landscape soil and subsoil profiles. This becomes a great advantage to the potential productivity of any property, especially a property that is designed to be diverse and interactive with many ecosystem elements. When you design a property this way, a mainframe approach as a consultant designer is:
Comments (2)Reducing Urban Water Use
Biological Cleaning, Compost, Conservation, Potable Water, Rehabilitation, Soil Conservation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Storm Water, Waste Systems & Recycling, Waste Water, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Earth Policy Institute November 4, 2010
by Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt once noted that "civilized people ought to know how to dispose of the sewage in some other way than putting it into the drinking water."
The one-time use of water to disperse human and industrial wastes is an outmoded practice, made obsolete by new technologies and water shortages. Yet it is still common around much of the world. Water enters a city, becomes contaminated with human and industrial wastes, and leaves the city dangerously polluted. Toxic industrial wastes discharged into rivers and lakes or into wells also permeate aquifers, making water—both surface and underground—unsafe for drinking.
Comments (3)Strawberry Fields Update – Flood Protection and Water Control in Ethiopia
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Conservation, Dams, Demonstration Sites, Earth Banks, Education Centres, Gabions, Irrigation, Land, Regional Water Cycle, Roads, Soil Conservation, Storm Water, Terraces, Water Harvesting — by Alex McCausland October 8, 2010
One of the biggest challenges of doing Permaculture in a semi-arid place like Konso is the drought-flood hydrology besets in degraded dry-lands. The whole of south Ethiopia has now been so deforested, added to the fact that the global climate is getting completely messed up, that rainfall is now completely unpredictable. The old folks are always talking about it here – “you can’t tell when it will rain any-more, it’s not like the old days….” That makes planning plantings much harder for one thing. The other thing is that when it does rain, it pours.
Our site at Strawberry Fields is placed (purposefully) at the bottom of a watershed and at the junction of this watershed and a larger watershed which carries run-off down the main road from the town.
Rough Topographic sketch of the site at SFEL. Shows approximate
positions of the 3 ridges (R1,R2, R3 and 3 primary gulleys G1, G2 and G3
as well as the Main Gulley on as well as the 2 main flows of run-off
effecting the site.
Confessions of a Permaculture Aid Worker, Episode 3: Marda Permaculture Farm in Palestine
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Courses/Workshops, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres, News, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Storm Water, Urban Projects, Village Development, Waste Water, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Patrick Blampied May 15, 2010
‘Confessions of a Permaculture Aid Worker’ is a weekly podcast show from PRI Australia aimed at documenting the experiences of people out in the field and making more information available about what’s happening in the Permaculture world.
In Episode 3 I’m speaking to Murad from Marda Permaculture in Palestine. He runs a Permaculture demonstration site and is co-teaching a PDC with David Spicer and Brad Lancaster in June 2010.
Confessions of a Permaculture Aid Worker, Episode 3 - Marda Permaculture Farm in Palestine Comments (7)French Drains for Urban Storm-water Infiltration
Biological Cleaning, Conservation, Storm Water, Waste Water, Water Harvesting — by Campbell Wilson July 9, 2009
When rainwater harvesting is mentioned, most people think of tanks straight away. That’s a great start, but there is a much bigger storage you have available to you on your land – the soil. (Check out Brad Lancaster’s fun U-tube video on this site, ‘The muffin tin and the sponge’ for a good intro)
So when your gutters flow and your tanks are full, don’t send all that valuable water straight the drain like so many do. Instead, have a go at utilising that water in your garden by creating a system similar to this.
Comments (2)Greywater Mulch Pits
Biological Cleaning, Compost, Conservation, Soil Conservation, Storm Water, Swales, Waste Water, Water Contaminaton & Loss, Water Harvesting — by Campbell Wilson May 20, 2009
by Cam Wilson, Forest Edge Permaculture
Greywater mulch-pits provide an excellent solution when re-using greywater on your garden – they are cheap to construct, they improve the quality of water entering your soil and after some time provide you with valuable compost. They’re very easy to construct too. You basically just dig a hole, wack in some 100mm ag-pipe and then fill it up with nice chunky mulch.
Harvesting Urban Drool
Conservation, Regional Water Cycle, Storm Water, Waste Water, Water Harvesting — by Brad Lancaster April 4, 2009
© Brad Lancaster, www.HarvestingRainwater.com
 Urban drool running down concreted channel Tujunga Wash, Los Angeles, California. Photo credit: Brad Lancaster |
All around the world I see water wastefully flowing down and out of urban street curbs and concreted storm drains even though it has not rained in months. It is not stormwater I see flowing. It is urban drool. Others call it “nuisance runoff” – water from leaky pipes, driveway car washes, overwatered landscapes, and so on – our waste. But it can be a resource. It can be harvested.
That is what is happening in Los Angeles, California long a mile long stretch of the Tujunga Wash Flood Control Channel, between Vanowen Street and Oxnard Avenue. It is bringing myriad life back to this community.
Comments (0)Taking the Tragedy Out of Wildfires with Permaculture Design
Biological Cleaning, Community Projects, Conservation, Global Warming/Climate Change, Land, Plant Systems, Regional Water Cycle, Storm Water, Trees, Urban Projects, Waste Systems & Recycling, Waste Water, Water Harvesting — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor March 21, 2009
Recent wildfires in Australia shocked the nation, and the world – killing more than 200 people, untold creatures, buildings and other property. Indeed, entire towns were razed to the ground. In the following podcast, Geoff Lawton (talking while on the road – in his true multitasking style) talks about how Permaculture can tackle this issue head on, by designing appropriate Permaculture systems around settlements that would passively and perpetually protect people and property from the kind of horrific devastation we witnessed last month.
In comparison to the cost in life and property that these fires bring, such systems would be extremely cost-effective, and if done thoughtfully could also be used to bring other benefits – beyond fire protection – to local populations, wildlife and the environment. These concepts should be urged upon your local political representative for their consideration, and not just in Australia. Climate change is causing many normally wet regions to begin to dry out and already dry areas to dry out even more – so we can expect the frequency and intensity of fires to escalate in coming years.
You can listen to the clip in its entirety here (17 min, 15.4mb MP3). To download the file, simply right-click on the link and choose ‘Save Link As’ (Firefox) or ‘Save Target As’ (Internet Explorer).
Comments (2)Tackling Urban Water Runoff in a Sydney Suburb
Conservation, Food Forests, Land, Storm Water, Swales, Urban Projects, Waste Water, Water Harvesting — by Andrea Pape March 13, 2009
Swales aren’t often found in backyards, and water systems are the backbone of a permaculture design, so the Permaculture Sydney North Gardening Team jumped at the opportunity to take on a swale project in a lush Turramurra backyard, just around the corner from the APC9 venue.
Turramurra has the highest rainfall in Sydney with averages of around 1300mm a year, and issues such as flooding and erosion are common in lower areas of the catchments. The traditional approach to urban storm water has been to treat it as a problem, and to our detriment our cities have largely been designed to collect and dispose of rainfall as quickly as possible. City watercourses are being battered by dramatic and damaging flow patterns that would not have existed before hard surfaces and drainage systems were put in place. We are also wasting a hell of a lot of water.
Local government often approaches the problem with end-of-pipe solutions such as preserving riparian vegetation and stabilising channels with weirs, logs or concrete ‘realignments’. Water sensitive urban design is starting to be considered by councils, but this usually focuses on public or industrial areas, and will often prescribe expensive engineering structures that are out of reach of most home owners.
Comments (9)Street Orchards for Community Security
Biological Cleaning, Community Projects, Conservation, Food Forests, Food Plants - Perennial, Land, Potable Water, Regional Water Cycle, Rehabilitation, Roads, Soil Conservation, Storm Water, Trees, Urban Projects, Village Development, Waste Systems & Recycling, Waste Water, Water Contaminaton & Loss, Water Harvesting — by Brad Lancaster January 19, 2009
© Brad Lancaster, www.HarvestingRainwater.com
 Fig. 24.The heat island effect. An excessively wide, exposed, solar-oven-like residential street in Tucson, Arizona absorbs the sun’s heat during the day like a battery, then radiates it out at night. This local warming effect has raised summer temperatures in Tucson by 6°F (3°C) since the 1940s, which contributes to global warming since the higher temperatures result in people using air conditioners more, which are powered by electricity generated through the burning of coal. Note that no shade trees are planted in the public right-of-way along the street, leaving street and sidewalk baked. All runoff is drained off site leaving the development dehydrated. Reproduced with permission from “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1" |
My view of public streets was radically changed when I heard ecovillage designer Max Lindigger tell a story of an insightful walk he took with his grandfather. “Look there,” said his grandfather, pointing to condominiums being built on the once forested slopes above his village in the Swiss Alps. “That’s where we grew and gathered food during the war. The forests were common land, a reserve of community resources. What commons remain? Where will we grow and gather our food in the next catastrophe?”
I then looked at my Sonoran desert city of Tucson, Arizona and asked myself, “Where are my community’s forests, our commons? Where would we get our food in times of need?”
Comments (5)The Muffin Tin and the Sponge
Conservation, Potable Water, Regional Water Cycle, Roads, Storm Water, Swales, Waste Water, Water Contaminaton & Loss, Water Harvesting — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor January 10, 2009
Two simple ways of illustrating how to plant the rain
Brad Lancaster, author of the award-winning books “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond” and info-packed website www.HarvestingRainwater.com, demonstrates how we can get the most from the rain by planting it in the soil, then accessing it with living pumps of plants. These are simple concepts that help turn scarcity into abundance.
Convergence of Issues Leads to Southern California Permaculture Convergence, August 29-31, 2008
Conservation, News, Presentations/Demonstrations, Social Gatherings, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Storm Water, Water Contaminaton & Loss, Water Harvesting, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor August 31, 2008
Cooling off after the first day of the Southern California Permaculture Convergence,
hosted by the Quail Springs Learning Oasis and Permaculture Farm
Yesterday the Southern California Permaculture Convergence got underway. The word ‘convergence’ is the operative word here, and, ironically, to me at least, has a double meaning. Over the last couple of weeks, being here at Quail Springs just reminds me of the convergence of issues we face as a race, just as we ‘converge’ to network, share instruction and ideas, and find new ways to work together to face those same issues.
Let me explain, using an example very close to where we are today.
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