Special to the HT
MEEKER | How does a Christmas tree keep on giving? When Meeker households donate them to the White River Alliance for restoring our watershed.
Last weekend, volunteers from the White River Alliance picked up and placed the roughly 40 trees this year (a big jump from last year!) so they could be slowing water flow and sediment dumping in eroding stream beds and arroyos. Without barriers to catch sediments, these erosions continue to incise and lower our water table making it harder for native vegetation to survive.
Volunteers placed used trees in private land along Strawberry Creek and Sulpher Creek as part of a wider effort to help slow down diminishing streamflows and worsening erosion problems.
By using obstacles such as rocks, check dams, old Christmas trees and human engineered beaver dam analogs, the water is slowed, allowing sediment to drop and raise the water table, as well as creating natural underground water storage.
Each year Colorado reservoirs and surface storage buckets lose nearly a million acre feet of water from evaporative loss. Some experts estimate that as much as five feet of water can evaporate in the desert areas in Western Colorado in one season. Slowing our water down, and encouraging underground storage, allows healthy riparians to function and restores the natural hydrograph, helping springs and creeks recover.
A huge thanks to all the Meeker households who donated their used Christmas trees to help area landowners get a start revitalizing their eroded gullies and holding water on their land longer.
If you would like to get some help, call president Shawn Welder at 970-314-5923 to get on the list.
The Alliance is applying for grant help to hire riparian experts to help landowners for free on how to improve their soil and riparian areas to prepare for a hotter, drier future.
The Alliance meets monthly and offers an interesting speaker each month, public invited!
Visit whiteriveralliance.net for more information.
Mary Taylor, Andy Thompson and Steve Coley work to construct Beaver Dam Analogs in Yellow Creek.