La Capilla Wetland Gets An Upgrade

Back in the trees is La Capilla Wetland, picnic tables and hiking paths. Nineteen Youth Conservation Corp (YCC) workers from Aldo Leopold High spent 2.5 weeks improving the water flow from hillsides, Robert St diversions and the Senior Center parking lot into the wetland area witch contains cattails native willow trees and more.

When my kids and I stumbled upon the wetland in 1981 it was a dumping place for trash; there were piles of unused asphalt left over from road paving and piles of discarded broken-up concrete but remarkably lush and green, today it is part of the La Capilla Heritage Park and easily accessed from the Senior Center parking lot although any of the trails around the 23 acre park will take you there.

Sometime in the early 2000's the area was cleaned up, brick paths installed and picnic tables built but the water flows needed more help to get to the actual wetland. 

Following a design by Stream Dynamics the group moved a brick path, cleaned out an old culvert, dug a catchment pond, installed a new culvert and many more improvements to the water flows. Above shows the layout for the new path on the left (the old path used to extend straight back from the wheel barrow) and a catchment pond filled by the short culvert under the old section of brick pathway which, when full will now "sheet flood" towards the cattails and willows.