Presentation to highlight sustainability, flooding

Published 10:23 am Monday, April 1, 2013

The Austin Izaak Walton League will have a special presentation tonight at its 7 p.m. meeting at the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center.

Larry Stone, Iowa author and nature photographer, and Bob Watson, an environmentalist who works in the Iowa wastewater industry, will present “A Watershed Approach to Fewer Floods, More Productive Farms, Cleaner Water and More Wildlife.” The presentation is free, open to the public and will be held in the Ruby Rupner auditorium.

There’s more than one way to mitigate flooding, Stone and Watson say. Rather than only building expensive levees, dams, and other structures, people need to manage watersheds to reduce the causes of the highwater those previously mentioned structures are expected to contain. Perennial agriculture can recreate the complex “sponge” of vegetation that historically absorbed and held rainwater on and in the land.

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