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A Most Excellent Video About Watershed Health

Read on if you like San Lorenzo River health, watershed, Santa Cruz Mountains and the Coastal Watershed Council.

Jan. 23, 2014—OK, it might not sound that exciting. But if you like drinking water, bathing, watering your garden and not being a a total jerk to the native fish, you'll probably find something to like about this 20-minute vid from the Coastal Watershed Council.

Titled "Liquid Assets: Protecting Our Creeks, Streams and Rivers," it features experts standing next to streams talking about how we can make our watersheds healthier by doing things to prevent erosion and slow down the water so coho can lay their eggs. It's targeted to people with property on streams and rivers, but the truth is all of us can use this information.

Read about the results of 2013 Snapshot Day.

For example, when Soquel Creek Water District Board veep Bruce Daniels explains to the camera why "non-point pollution"—the nasty mix of fertilizers, pesticides, transmission fluid, oil and God knows what else that emanates from any place inhabited by modern humans—is the biggest threat to local waterways, he puts it this way: "We all like to think farmers are to blame. But farmers, in some ways, are cheap. They only put on as much as they think they will neeed. Whereas homeowners don't know how much they need. If they get a bottle of bug spray, they'll put the whole thing in the front yard ... That may be 10 times as much as needed." Ouch. Busted.

A parade of biologists explain to viewers why it's good to leave fallen trees and debris in creeks and rivers, and how not to make the San Lorenzo River's sedimentation problem worse (let your stormwater drain into a two-foot-deep gravel pit rather than shoot it out over a sandy bank into the river).

My favorite part? Watching plant ecologist Kathleen Lyons of the Biotic Resources Group plant willow sticks—really, just bare sticks—in a riverbank. That's at about 16:00. Check the whole most excellent thing out below.

Liquid Assets: Protecting Our Creeks, Streams, and Rivers from Raindancer Media on Vimeo.

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