About Stream Dynamics
Stream Dynamics areas of expertise
Water Resource Consultation
Stream Dynamics will carefully look at the water flow paths and determine how to transform storm water runoff into a valuable resource for your property. This thoughtful approach is cost effective because it protects infrastructure from erosion and flooding while creating a free water resource on the property that will irrigate trees and other landscaping every time there is a good rain. We will diagnose the problem and give you a competitive bid to convert all the nuisance runoff that is damaging your property into a safe and gentle resource that will deeply irrigate your landscaping, providing shade trees, windbreaks, property screening, wildlife habitat, food, and beauty.
Road Drainage
Improperly drained roads and driveways trap runoff on the road surface, causing ruts, erosion and flooding problems. Stream Dynamics will redesign the road drainage and redirect runoff to growing vegetation. Call us before replacing the surface of a dirt road or driveway, and it will not wash off again during the next big rainstorm.
Erosion Control
Many watercourses in our region are in a state of erosion, either cutting deeper, or cutting sideways, or both. We are gully, stream, and arroyo specialists and will devise a beautiful solution, working with native plant materials and stone.
Water Stewardship
The philosophy of Stream Dynamics is to provide our customers with design and construction of landscaping features that will protect the precious water resources that fall free from the sky or flow across your property. We will slow runoff by causing it to soak deeply into the ground to irrigate gardens and native vegetation and prevent it from causing erosion. We will prevent excess runoff from leaving your property, and we will allow a balanced amount of water to continue seeping through the subsoil to natural watercourses, and to downstream users and ecosystems that need it, following both natural law and man's laws.
Water Harvesting
Water Harvesting is the conversion of nuisance storm water runoff into a valuable resource. Inexpensive and easy to maintain landscaping features such as shallow earth basins redirect the water away from valuable infrastructure such as your house or driveway, and cause the water to soak deeply into the ground where it will be accessible by tree roots during the dry season, saving costly irrigation of landscaping. Water harvesting will reduce downstream flooding, and purity the water by causing it to soak into the ground, allowing growing plants to bio-remediate the small amount of pollution in storm water runoff.
Van Clothier, Owner
Van graduated from the University of California at San Diego in 1982 with a degree in physics. His firm, Stream Dynamics, Inc., specializes in turning runoff and erosion problems into water harvesting opportunities with water harvesting earth works, urban stormwater retrofits, and riparian and wetland restoration in both urban and wildland settings.
Van has worked extensively in New Mexico and Arizona on a variety of restoration projects with regional drylands stream restoration and water harvesting experts including Bill Zeedyk, and Brad Lancaster. He has completed the River Restoration and Natural Channel Design stream restoration course schedule taught by Dr. Dave Rosgen. He is the co-author with Bill Zeedyk of a book called Let the Water Do the Work: Induced Meandering, an Evolving Method for Restoring Incised Channels, published November, 2009. He received his Water Harvesting Certification from Watershed Management Group in 2011.
Recent projects include designing water harvesting stormwater retrofits for the City of Santa Fe, and restoring a very large ciénega (desert marsh) in the bootheel of New Mexico.
Understanding the dynamics of stormwater management is often obscured by fancy software modeling and over-engineered design. There is sometimes a disconnect between what we see when we look at a grassy swale and our stormwater management plans that quickly drain away any water as if it were not . . . water - our most valuable resource!
Stream Dynamics uses a holistic and intuitive approach that creates the most cost-effective, efficient and beautiful results. Learn the basic principles for putting urban stormwater runoff to beneficial use for healthy communities in a way that is both economically and ecologically sustainable.
