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This ephemeral pond sits in a front yard near the top of West 6th Street on the south side of the street. Ephemeral in the sense that the 30 or so ponds around town appear after a rain and within a day or 2 are generally gone/empty. Aside from the big ditch, surface water in the form of ponds are hard to find. Head out as a good rain slows or stops, the easiest to find is the Office of Sustainability Community Orchard ponds shown below full of water.



Just to give a sense of how large this pond is.


At the Guadalupe Montessori School 4 (in the parking lot) of nine water catchment basins have been completed. This large project was funded by PNM's "Power Up Grant".


The public is invited to use that green field shown in the background. If you walk your dog, don't forget the pooper-scooper.


And of course there is the Community Orchard behind the Office of Sustainability. In a recent rain 3 of the basins filled with water shown above and below.




There are a number of landscapers in the area who do this kind of work work.

Being one of the owners of the catchment basin, I've now seen it completely filled five or six times.
One question that I'd like to know now is:
Assuming a basin like mine fills to capacity ... where does the water go?
Does this water get :absorbed into the general aquifer or does it follow pathways under my property to what may be part of a spring that starts somewhere higher, in the Boston Hills, Chloride Flats area?
If the water infiltrates the aquifer, is that the intent of all the catchment basins?
With approximately 30 basins already dug, what changes have folks from Stream Dynamics noticed overall?
How do we publicize this as one of the more attractive features of a "greener" Silver City? For instance, there must be many thousands of home
owners in California and Arizona who might wish to try these features to save rain water when rain comes.
In California, do we know of any such efforts, in particular, in a city in California, which we could become a "partner" city?
It seems to me that what happens in California so far as their severe drought, fires,
Are there some large city OR county sites that could be brought into this project? I've pointed out a few to John Crow and Van Clothier.
The park behind Sustainability Bldg is a very nice one. Perhaps a tour of places to inspire others to get onto this band wagon.
As the guy who has written "Hiking Apacheria," for the Desert Exposure

www.desertexposure.com/apacheria
I also now write articles for the Independent. This is a series on "Mangas Coloradas."
Also: Voices of the West.com has at least 3 podcasts of interviews I participated in talking about various subjects related to the Apache.

I hope to share more in that column about the intrinsic connection with the waters of Agua de Santa Lucia>>Santa Lucia Springs>>Mangas Springs, Mangas Creek, cienega there, Blacksmith Cañon Creek; Cottonwood Creek; and the waters that were readily accessible to the Mogollon and
Apaches.
"Water to water" was a phrase the Apaches used to indicate that they saw this vast arid environment as not as threatening to their well being as the Spanish, Mexicans and Americans all did in terms of water.
The uses of water by those three groups, but most definitely, the Spanish, Mexicans and Americans in mining activities, were the first "tapping" of aquifers that had taken MILLIONS of years to build.
And, here we are, with western states finding it near impossible to slake their thirst and consumption of water; with California and Arizona pushing in their own ways, the damming of every major river in the West to ... continue to have lawns in settings that have no business being lawns ... golf courses, parks that don't use xeriscape techniques as the Droughts in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas ... threaten life in cities large and small.
In other words, those practices amount to "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
I reckon it would take millions of catchment basins just here in NM to have an impact on aquifer replenishment.
BUT ... it starts with local folks taking advantage of grants that Stream Dynamics, et al, have for at least 2016.