4-6-11

After a day in the field, you know there is a lot of office work to do the day that follows. Because I wasn't really feeling invested in the first field visit yesterday, I took the beginning of the day to get more details on what exactly we had decided for that property. Because so much was already known to Rich from working with the client before, not all the information had been said out loud in front of Angie and I. Turns out the neighbor had sold his land and due to the buyer foreclosing, had received the property again. He had also deep tilled his property so it was creating even more runoff where as a non tilled property would have been able to take in the water coming from the clients property. There had also been some confusion of what practices we were going to do. Basically, this was going to be an intensive project involving leveling one side of the field, taking almost 1/3 of the property out of production and then installing a french drain that would collect the water and pipe it to the other side of the property where there was a natural area to disperse it to allow it to become sheet flow. I definitely felt a lot happier about the project once I fully understood the history and the suggested projects. It is difficult to decide what may be the best option if u are unaware of the property's history.

I also discussed more about the poisonous plants for horses poster. Even though I am no longer doing it as my senior project, I still wanted to have something I could contribute to the RCD and NRCS. Plus, there is a poster symposium and workshop on campus that I thought would be fun to do. This solves the problem of trying to find time to work with Angie (RCD) in the office on creating the style of the poster. We had decided a while ago it would be 10 plants shown, as well as the symptoms, the severity, and how to manage it. I talked to George today, the "plant guy" despite being focused in restoration ecology, about which plants to use. I expect to hear back from him what he believes is the most common in the Santa Cruz area. From there, I plan to get in touch with the veterinarian who has been involved with the livestock and land program about what she sees most often. We plan on putting her name at the bottom as an incentive.

Then we were off to the Soquel water district office to hear the RCD's road plan. I was expecting it to be a discussion of the roads program they have. It actuality it was a ranking of the various projects that have said they have an interest in getting grant money to improve their roads. Most of the projects involved better culverts or replacements of current culverts. They were ranked based on their cost, the amount of effect they would have (either on a high number of people or how far into the watershed they were). There were a lot of projects done in pretty remote areas, but because they would improve turbidity downstream in valuable steel head and coho habitat, they were ranked higher. The RCD expects that they should be able to fund them all. We also saw project successes one of which was attached to the building. They had used last years grant money to install a rain garden and catchment system to the Water District building. One of the most interesting things I saw them do was put crates underground to create more space to hold water underground.

Lastly they presented us with a very recent project resulting from the rains on the 26th. I had previously seen these pictures when they were sent to Rich requesting for assistance, but seeing them after a discussion of these roads and putting it in context, I realized how bad the situation was. The problem was an incorrect culvert was installed after ignoring a design created by the NRCS which had resulted in the side of the waterway to fall in, and this isn't just feet. This was the loss of a few square yards on each side and two full trees. It comes to show you how a change in grade in a culvert or a deviation from an engineered plan can make a huge differences. Rich also informed me that we were going to go look at this project on Monday, if the government allowed it.

Starting this internship, Rich had always guaranteed me that working for the federal government has the highest job security. Now 3.5 months later, we were looking at furlough days with an unknown deadline. Its amazing how much can change in a short amount of time. I knew that unemployment was at a new high, but I never thought they would completely shut down the government. And yet, I was told I was to call in before I came to my internship to make sure I could still show up. Rich was desperately trying to considered as emergency response (they could still work on Monday) since he was responding to people with landslide or property issues relating to the storm. It truly amazed me how much he enjoys his job. Rather than relishing in a day off, he was not just waiting to find out if he could work on Monday, but advocating for a chance to help more people. I found truly inspirational that there are still some people out there who truly enjoy what they do everyday.