For decades, the Southwest has been crippled by a growing crisis.
The worst drought seen in over 1,000 years.
But in Tucson, one man has been trying to change that narrative,
one house, one neighborhood at a time.
-Grew up here in Tucson and saw
the water situation get worse over time.
As the groundwater table dropped, um, saw a lot of springs drying up.
I wanted to figure out solutions, and I just took off and
started tracking people down and experimenting.
-Now you are in the center of water wisdom.
-And that's when I learned about Singh and the amazing work being
done to reclaim five dying rivers.
In the 1980s, Dr. Rajendra Singh
had traveled to one of India’s poorest farming areas
to provide medical care,
but quickly learned that drought and decades of over
pumping had created a more pressing crisis.
-One old man say, no need your
medicine. We not need education. We need water.
So he teach me.
He show me
the way of conservation of water.
Returning to an ancient practice once seen as obsolete,
Singh began to dig out a large pit,
known as a johad, that could capture the monsoon rains
and recharge the aquifers for the dry season.
-The British Empire destroyed that culture, that way of water conservation.
But the johad is a very simple way, and johad is a,
a, really connected with the culture of India.
With little help, Singh worked to create his first johad.
But when the monsoon filled it, others took notice and wanted to learn.
-So when the people see I created a johad,
a lot of people come back and asked what type of the support we can do.
And after this self-motivation, the people join.
More than 1,300 villages today, I can say they have the water.
The core issue of the challenge of this modern world is water.
Without focus of this, this world can't survive.
Singh ultimately helped reshape the destiny of large swaths of India.
But his teachings also spread far beyond India’s borders.
-This inspiration – not only for community, or not only for me.
This inspiration for all.
Historical practices like these had also been revived in places like Zimbabwe,
by visionary farmers such as Zephaniah Phiri Maseko
who became a mentor to Brad Lancaster.
-It was so different from what I'd been exposed to in college and whatnot,
which was typically higher-tech, higher-cost strategies
that weren't really accessible to the individual, the family, or the neighborhood.
I mean, I was blown away by just the incredible positive effect
that this work had. But I also realized – wow, I can do this.
Anyone can do this that has the ability to move a shovel.
The first thing I did wasn't really reducing water use.
It was instead making water go further.
What are some examples of that? We raised all our
pathways to become catchment surfaces to drain to the adjoining planted areas.
We directed the water from household drains to a basin with a tree.
I started collecting the water off my roof, and I directed it into a tank,
which I then sent to my kitchen sink.
Just like the old TV show “The Fall Guy,” I love a bathtub outside.
I can use rainwater or city water in this outdoor shower.
So with this bucket – get the water going, cool off.
All right, that cools me off on a hot summer day.
I learned that with just a 400-square-foot roof,
I could provide 95 percent of my domestic water needs.
The biggest challenge is being able to see what change is possible.
But once you make a little change, it's like climbing a rung of a ladder.
You can now see the next rung.
Tucson had begun to embrace some conservation efforts after a
disastrous 1974 drought left wells running dry, and diversified its water
sources by turning to the Colorado River.
But Lancaster wanted to show that rainwater
could be a big part of the solution.
So he began enlisting his neighbors.
Among the first lessons was how to make a curb cut,
drawing on techniques used by local indigenous tribes
who had long diverted stormwater into their crops and gardens.
-The water flows along the street gutter here, enters the curb cut,
fills this whole basin behind the tree,
and freely irrigates all these multi-use native plants.
When we did the first one, this was illegal, O.K., or I think a better term is pre-legal.
But neighbors saw how well it worked. I mean, the vegetation was doing fantastic.
They'd say, you know, I just love coming by here and seeing new blooms,
new growth, things I hadn't seen before.
How are you doing this?
So, with the inspiration of the past and the desire to change the present,
we organized this annual tree planting project.
And then we thought, well, how can we plant this forest in a way
and tend this forest in a way that helps build a more resilient community?
Because everyone that lives around us,
they're part of the potential of this place.
-Hey Brad, how you doing? Just coming to say hello and that I’ve
never seen the goats being milked. This is Larick right?
-Yeah. So what, if you want, we can schedule a milk training.
-See? See, this is how he is. He's, he is first and most an educator.
-So now you walk down our streets, you don't see barren walkway.
It's a multilayered forest of many diverse species of plants.
And whereas in the past, it was rare to come upon a neighbor as you walked,
now you run into neighbors all the time. It’s fantastic.
With success building in his neighborhood, Brad consulted on
other conservation projects and pushed his city to act. It ultimately
legalized curb cutting and incentivized the harvesting of rainwater.
-It was incredible to see. Like we went from a 10-year period where
I could count on my hand how many people I knew harvesting water, to
the point where there was someone in just about every neighborhood
harvesting water in Tucson. And it was great, because what I was
observing is health improving all around me.
-My house was the first house here in the neighborhood that got a
water harvesting tank installed. And so it was really cool to learn how to
do it. And we shared skills and then that person can then do that in their
neighborhood or their house. And then it does like a ripple effect of
this knowledge being shared out.
-These are indigenous concepts.
We, we want to connect with our indigenous roots.
We want to be able to be sustainable. We want to
be able to grow our own food in a way that is part of our roots.
-All messed up, yeah. Yeah, that’s happened so many times.
-You know, so you start looking at the world a little bit differently once
you start being a part of these projects. A lot of these lessons, a
lot of these strategies are like common sense, you know, but
you're not exposed to them. So it's up to us to make it equitable and to
share that with everybody else.
Through a myriad of conservation efforts,
the city has reduced its water usage by more than 30 percent
over the last two decades, despite a ballooning population.
-By adding green stormwater infrastructure, we can bring shade,
we can increase quality of life.
Sustainability is absolutely part of public health.
It's pretty progressive stuff. And the city of Tucson is
one of the most well-positioned
Southwestern cities as far as water security is concerned,
and that is thanks to forward thinking about water conservation
and looking to the community and all of these grassroots actions that take water,
stormwater, off the street and put it locally into the landscape.
But as the drought continues, threats are growing,
from booming development to a dwindling Colorado River.
-In an environment where water is increasingly scarce and precious,
we need to make the most of all of our various water resources.
Stormwater is a free resource that is renewable, that we can harness
to offset other water needs
and put that water to work in the most effective way possible.
-The biggest hurdle to widespread adoption of water harvesting in the
United States is a lack of exposure to
working water harvesting systems.
I have not yet found a place where
these water harvesting approaches can't
help that place, and enhance that place.
-So while I'm pouring this water into the olla
from the cistern, it slowly goes around everywhere.
-If you don't have anyone practicing this simple water harvesting,
you don't have the cultural seed
that can talk to others and say, well, this is how I did it,
so people can walk through it, experience it and try and evolve it.
So that's what's essential, is that you just begin.
-You're gonna help me teach everybody. Thank you.
-We're moving in that direction. We're just at the beginning of the journey.
We have to build the resilience in as many people
as possible that are here, so this becomes part of the culture,
becomes part of the daily practice.
-My helper right here. She's a smart little girl.
-Yeah, well, Aaliyah is often in the garden. Oh, are you getting emotional?
Oh, sweet lady. Oh.
-Kids like her are gonna make a change, that's for sure.