Planning conservation with you

Soil and Water Conservation districts were designed to play the lead role in locally led and resource-driven conservation. Within the Valencia Soil and Water Conservation District, rapid population growth and change in land ownership characteristics have removed the small-town familiarity among people and the agencies serving them.

By way of example, the Valencia SWCD is commonly mistaken for the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, leaving folks unaware of VSWCD’s mission and programs.

Since 1997, when VSWCD’s last long-range conservation plan was written, the population of this district grew from 65,000 to 89,000. In the late 1990s, there were 28,000 acres of irrigated land, with 16,671 such acres in Valencia County. Today, following rapid urbanization of former villages, the irrigated acreage in Valencia County dropped to roughly half that amount.

Increasing amounts of acreage are shifting to fruit and vegetable production, especially in small farms of 0.5 to 3 acres, because people see opportunities in the growing trend of “eat fresh and eat local.”

These changes underline the need for the VSWCD to understand the current natural resource concerns in the district. In the next six months, the VSWCD will conduct informational outreach and conduct a survey of district residents, thanks to a grant from the Land of Enchantment Legacy Fund. The VSWCD has contracted a local natural resource expert, Cliff Sanchez, to design a survey of the natural resource concerns of district residents, calculate results and write a district conservation plan informed by survey results.

The VSWCD hopes this outreach will open the door to a world of learning about its available and accessible program resources. Such services often are unknown to the urban dwellers of the district and include practical things like being able to buy a water-conserving toilet or add a rain barrel to gutters to capture and diver rain to a backyard garden — with 75 percent reimbursement from the district.

With the growing trend of moving into small-acreage or backyard-grown food, this new outreach aims to inform people that they can apply to the district for technical and financial assistance. The district niche is the beginning farmers who cannot as yet qualify for cost-share assistance from the Natural Resource Conservation Service.

VSWCD’s program includes complimentary services, such as soil testing, physical assessment of the soil and a tailor-made conservation plan. The district also reimburses up to 75 percent of project expenses for qualifying applicants (with a cap at $7,500).

VSWCD has begun to hear from residents who are concerned about one natural resource issue in particular — erosion in western Valencia County. The desertification in this area is happening on barren soil, causing dust storms that obscure visibility on the roadways and lead to traffic accidents.

Earlier this year, a giant haboob in Bernalillo County resulted in fatal car accidents. These dust storms also worsen the health of residents, particularly those suffering from lung disease and devalue their properties.

Soil and water conservation districts were formed in the 1940s as a response to the environmental disaster in the 1930s known as the Dust Bowl. Here, the wholesale removal of topsoil from the land allows the wind to erode the soil in a seemingly never-ending cycle. With input from district residents, however, VSWCD and other agencies can work to mitigate desertification and prevent further erosion through the implementation of healthy soil practices.

Healthy soil also captures and filters urban runoff and helps mitigate flooding, which is particularly relevant to the farmers and landowners in the district who have been affected by repeated catastrophic floods.

Municipal and county planning and zoning boards can include measures to prevent erosion and dust storms as one of the permitting requirements of big projects, but only if residents voice their natural resource concerns.

Working together can produce results. Take the district’s Whitfield Wildlife Conservation Area of 97 acres along the Middle Rio Grande. Over a 20-year period, a failed land development project was transformed into preserved green space. How? Hundreds of volunteers, including the Friends of Whitfield, planted more than 8,000 native trees and bushes. Federal and state partners funded walking trails, irrigation ditches, and a 1-acre pond.

Today, Whitfield is home to salt-grass meadows, cottonwoods recovering from the Big Hole Fire, and restored wetlands that provide habitat for elk, wild turkeys, cougars and more than 200 species of migratory birds. Whitfield has become a nature park that adults and children love exploring.

This district hopes its upcoming outreach survey will provide residents with the chance to be heard, the opportunity to be informed, and the knowledge that their input matters. This engagement will help the district build a harmonious conservation effort for a quality environment.

(Teresa de Cherif is vice chairwoman of the Valencia Soil and Water Conservation District Board of Supervisors.)