Van Clothier featured in Watershed Management Group Annual Report

See the full Watershed Management Group 2012 Annual Report PDF here. Text copied from report below.

A few years ago, Van Clothier went to a Green Infrastructure conference in Las Cruces, NM. “I met an intense young man who did a killer presentation.” That killer presenter was Catlow Shipek, WMG co-founder and Senior Program Manager.

“I had been doing stream restoration in wild areas for ten years. Learning about urban water harvesting changed my perspective and helped me pull it all together. Now I’m doing both,” says Van, who has taken WMG’s Water Harvesting Certification Course.

“After seeing Catlow at the conference, I wrote a grant to bring him to the NM Watershed Forum. Since then I’ve been using WMG as a resource and implementing their methods here in my home town.”

Now Van teaches workshops for WMG, including “Urban Stream Restoration,” offered this past January. Participants included natural resource managers, Prescott College students, and faculty from the Instituto Tecnologico Superior Cananea, Mexico.

“In the course, we teach people how to read the landscape, how to see subtle changes in topography and vegetation, and become a forensic hydrologist. Where is the water coming from and where’s it going? Where did it go and where did it come from prior to urbanization? How can we make best use of the water when it does rain?”

Van is delighted to be involved with WMG, which he considers a true give-and-take partnership: “I’m passionate about partnering with WMG because, of all the intractable problems in the world, water scarcity is one that actually has a graceful resolution that simultaneously benefits people, the environment, our economy, and our ecology. WMG shows us that all you have to do is make a small change, like cutting a little hole in the curb, and you can harvest a great resource for people.”