Media Coverage

Stream Dynamic's Bog Springs project featured in Ruidoso News:

A planned project to restore wetlands along Warrior Drive and further enhance the ecology in the area of Ruidoso High School has turned into an education for students. The proposed Bog Springs Drainage Restoration is a collaborative initiative that includes high school departments, individual teachers and classes of pupils.

"It's really exciting to see the amount of enthusiasm especially as I'm going from class to class," said Jen Zawacki, an ecologist educator with Stream Dynamics, a stream and wetland restoration company in New Mexico. "We have engagement from the history department looking at oral history where students could interview community members and kind of compile and document looking at both listening and written skills. I've met with the Spanish classes who are translating the project into their Spanish newsletters. I've met with both the web design class, who's looking at putting forth a website for the project so that would be available to the community, and through the school's tech support we've even got a camera that can be mounted to take time-lapse photography of kind of the Entrance Park as it is constructed. Students want to post that on the website so the community has a continual update of that part of the project."

See the rest in the Ruidoso News.

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.”

News from Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Cananea:

Sky Island Alliance e Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Cananea continúan haciendo un esfuerzo binacional en la educación ambiental, conservación y amistad.  
English: Sky Island Alliance and Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Cananea continue a binational effort in environmental education, conservation and friendship.

Una vez más, el rancho La Esmeralda, la propiedad privada ubicada al suroeste de Nogales, Sonora y a pocos kilómetros al sur de la frontera, ha sido testigo de una nueva actividad de restauración conjunta, liderada por Sky Island Alliance, la organización grassroots, dedicada a la protección y restauración del diverso patrimonio natural de especies nativas y hábitats de la región de las islas serranas del suroeste de Estados Unidos y noroeste de México y apoyada por el Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Cananea, quien colabora estrechamente en distintas labores de conservación y restauración desde marzo del año 2012, gracias al mutuo interés en el medio ambiente y que se ha visto fortalecido gracias al convenio de colaboración entre las mencionadas organizaciones.

El rancho tiene una larga historia de colaboración con Sky Island Alliance. En esta oportunidad ha albergado del 22 al 24 de febrero del año en curso a un grupo de once profesores y estudiantes del Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Cananea, cinco de ellos Involucrados por primera vez en actividades de voluntariado, siete miembros y voluntarios de Sky Island Alliance, así como al instructor Van Clothier de Stream Dynamics Inc. responsable del taller, entrenamiento y supervisión de las obras realizadas.

See the rest

A project designed to create a wetland and capture rainwater for irrigation at Ruidoso High School could get underway as early as April, said the founder of the company handling the work.

Nora Midkiff, chairman of the Ruidoso River Restoration Committee, which is charged by the courts with selecting $850,000 worth of projects aimed at improving the quality of water in the Rio Ruidoso, last week introduced Van Clothier to village councilors. Clothier, the founder of Stream Dynamics Inc. based in Silver City, gave the board an overview of the Bogs Springs project, the first approved by the RRRC.

"We are trying to craft a graceful resolution to a difficult water problem," Clothier said. "There has been some squabbling in the past and were looking to move forward with all the partners with minimum pain. The in-kind is an important part of that."

"I do watershed restoration and harvesting, and I know how to fix creeks and to turn erosion problems into water harvesting solutions. My company was awarded a contract two years ago to do an assessment of 28 miles of Ruidoso creeks. I have flown over your town twice and taken 1,000 air photos. Me and my partner, Steve Vrooman, walked Cedar Creek, Gavilan, Rio Ruidoso, all over the place and I have 1,000 (Global Satellite Position) points. We ended up proposing 28 possible projects to the committee."

"We interviewed longtime community members, conducted elevational surveys, analyzed our photos, met with the principal and teachers of the school and the school board, and took people on tours of the property." Clothier said.

"Bog Springs Creek is undercutting Warrior Drive and Warrior Drive will fall into the creek one day, if we don't stop it," Clothier told councilors. "So we propose to move the creek away from the road and create a wetland habitat up there. A little farther down along the creek, we will do grade stabilization of the creek and one of the concepts for this plan is called Entrance Park at the entry to the high school. We were talking to the principal and other administrators and they have an access problem at certain times and they've been wanting to move this road over anyway. This is great because we needed a little more room to do a water feature at the entrance to the school."

Read the rest at Ruidoso News website.