00:00:37.720 --> 00:00:42.720
- Long ago when the Earth was
just lava, rock and ocean,

00:00:43.940 --> 00:00:45.603
something happened in the water.

00:00:46.600 --> 00:00:48.803
Something flickered to life.

00:00:51.630 --> 00:00:55.610
It came at first like the
mist atop an emerging wave.

00:00:55.610 --> 00:00:58.343
Just the first expression
of a building momentum.

00:01:00.190 --> 00:01:02.910
And in time, a massive wave of life energy

00:01:02.910 --> 00:01:05.670
lifted from those oceans
and covered the planet

00:01:05.670 --> 00:01:07.920
in a blanket of life forms.

00:01:16.830 --> 00:01:19.290
Life emerged there in those oceans

00:01:20.360 --> 00:01:23.843
and it expresses itself now
wherever there is water.

00:01:26.200 --> 00:01:30.880
It's almost as if this quality
of aliveness is just a glint

00:01:30.880 --> 00:01:34.547
that shines through the
water in all things.

00:02:20.800 --> 00:02:22.733
This is quite a time to be alive.

00:02:23.670 --> 00:02:25.570
The conditions that make life possible

00:02:26.430 --> 00:02:28.023
are changing very quickly.

00:02:29.460 --> 00:02:31.193
All the species going extinct,

00:02:32.100 --> 00:02:33.763
the ecosystems collapsing,

00:02:34.690 --> 00:02:38.440
the resource wars and
extreme weather events.

00:02:44.040 --> 00:02:46.503
This is the era that I'm
coming of age within.

00:02:47.670 --> 00:02:50.150
And my life feels deeply informed

00:02:50.150 --> 00:02:52.863
by the context of this loss and change.

00:02:54.200 --> 00:02:57.070
So, four years ago I went
searching for stories

00:02:57.070 --> 00:02:58.523
of hope and healing.

00:03:01.500 --> 00:03:05.088
And everything I found
had everything to do...

00:03:07.302 --> 00:03:08.502
With water.

00:03:31.170 --> 00:03:34.550
Before seeking out those
examples of healing,

00:03:34.550 --> 00:03:37.150
I went to a place that
kind of encapsulates

00:03:37.150 --> 00:03:39.620
this moment we're in as a planet.

00:03:39.620 --> 00:03:41.980
I joined a group of
walkers in the Owens Valley

00:03:41.980 --> 00:03:45.480
which is in the Eastern
Sierras of Southern California

00:03:45.480 --> 00:03:48.633
to walk three weeks next to
the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

00:03:49.710 --> 00:03:51.570
You can see the Owens Valley here

00:03:51.570 --> 00:03:53.833
and the pipe running down to Los Angeles.

00:03:55.330 --> 00:03:59.423
The Mexico border down here, Oregon, SF.

00:04:37.454 --> 00:04:38.621
- Hello, guys.

00:04:43.850 --> 00:04:47.350
- Grandfather, listen to me, listen to us.

00:04:50.320 --> 00:04:52.640
Watch over our family.

00:04:52.640 --> 00:04:57.640
- Somehow in our walking, we
want to hold the whole story

00:04:59.240 --> 00:05:04.240
and then listen, as we'll begin
this day walking in silence,

00:05:04.250 --> 00:05:08.090
really listen to ourselves, to this place

00:05:08.090 --> 00:05:11.360
and carry the questions
that are in our hearts

00:05:11.360 --> 00:05:14.277
and that come to us in the journey.

00:05:26.710 --> 00:05:31.550
- Walking Water, it's a
three-year experience and walk

00:05:31.550 --> 00:05:34.490
and we're gonna follow all
the way down to Los Angeles

00:05:34.490 --> 00:05:38.040
and last year, we walked
together with the Owens River,

00:05:38.040 --> 00:05:38.923
with the water.

00:05:40.232 --> 00:05:44.120
And so, this year, we're
walking next to a pipe,

00:05:44.120 --> 00:05:46.170
which is the LA Aqueduct.

00:05:46.170 --> 00:05:49.860
So, we're pretty much 200 miles

00:05:51.010 --> 00:05:54.533
following this water
that has been enclosed.

00:05:56.810 --> 00:06:01.320
How much grieving is still
there to be done, to be had,

00:06:01.320 --> 00:06:04.403
you know, on a very collective basis?

00:06:16.690 --> 00:06:19.700
- In the early 1900s, LA set the stage

00:06:19.700 --> 00:06:22.410
for the epic metropolis it would become

00:06:22.410 --> 00:06:24.103
by completing the LA Aqueduct.

00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:28.200
The rivers and creeks of the Owens Valley

00:06:28.200 --> 00:06:30.420
were successfully diverted into pipes

00:06:30.420 --> 00:06:33.203
that gravity fed the
city over 200 miles away.

00:06:34.640 --> 00:06:37.140
They also drilled a series of giant wells

00:06:37.140 --> 00:06:39.670
into the valley floor,
in order to take water

00:06:39.670 --> 00:06:41.093
directly from the aquifer.

00:06:44.170 --> 00:06:48.410
At a dedication ceremony,
on November 5th, 1913,

00:06:48.410 --> 00:06:50.640
the principal engineer behind the project,

00:06:50.640 --> 00:06:54.683
William Mulholland, lifted
the gates and famously said,

00:06:55.657 --> 00:06:56.687
"There it is."

00:06:57.617 --> 00:06:58.617
- "Take it."

00:07:04.329 --> 00:07:05.829
- Oh, there we go.

00:07:08.160 --> 00:07:09.930
I just have a crazy knee that wants

00:07:09.930 --> 00:07:13.007
to give out on me every once in a while.

00:07:21.610 --> 00:07:23.710
- So you can see, you
know, what we look at now

00:07:23.710 --> 00:07:25.617
is a dry lake bed but you can imagine this

00:07:25.617 --> 00:07:29.130
with water all over it and
everything and people living

00:07:29.130 --> 00:07:30.930
and there's evidence that, you know,

00:07:30.930 --> 00:07:33.120
people lived along these shores.

00:07:33.120 --> 00:07:35.220
When my grandmother was a little girl,

00:07:35.220 --> 00:07:37.230
she was told by her uncle that,

00:07:37.230 --> 00:07:39.580
you're gonna see a day
when this lake is dry

00:07:39.580 --> 00:07:41.590
and everybody just laughed and said,

00:07:41.590 --> 00:07:42.620
there's no way they could...

00:07:42.620 --> 00:07:46.740
This is a 110 square miles of water

00:07:47.630 --> 00:07:50.640
and their people said, how in the heck

00:07:50.640 --> 00:07:55.070
could you ever dry out,
you know, this lake?

00:07:55.070 --> 00:07:58.487
But she lived to see this lake dried out.

00:08:13.235 --> 00:08:15.580
The natural topography
of the valley says that

00:08:15.580 --> 00:08:18.300
water is gonna flow off of the Sierra,

00:08:18.300 --> 00:08:21.550
it's gonna move through the tributaries

00:08:21.550 --> 00:08:23.260
and move into the Owens River

00:08:23.260 --> 00:08:25.760
and as it flows down the Owens River,

00:08:25.760 --> 00:08:27.300
it's gonna end up at Owens Lake.

00:08:27.300 --> 00:08:32.300
That's what this water has
done since time immemorial

00:08:33.120 --> 00:08:37.550
and LA has the audacity to
think it's gonna fully change

00:08:37.550 --> 00:08:39.333
the natural scheme of things.

00:08:43.630 --> 00:08:47.130
- Depending on the year,
the Owens Valley supplies LA

00:08:47.130 --> 00:08:51.620
with somewhere between 30
and 100% of its water needs

00:08:51.620 --> 00:08:53.640
and after more than a century of this,

00:08:53.640 --> 00:08:56.790
a lot of the valley, which
was once lush with life,

00:08:56.790 --> 00:08:58.233
is now considered desert.

00:09:00.800 --> 00:09:05.040
- As groundwater lowers, the
vegetation that relies on that,

00:09:05.040 --> 00:09:09.530
that groundwater is no longer
able to survive anymore

00:09:09.530 --> 00:09:13.200
and so, the vegetation dies off.

00:09:13.200 --> 00:09:16.163
And now, you've created
a desert landscape.

00:09:17.920 --> 00:09:21.270
- The essential importance
in having vegetation

00:09:21.270 --> 00:09:24.910
remain present and that
the conditions are viable

00:09:24.910 --> 00:09:29.523
for them to remain present
in a given landscape is,

00:09:30.560 --> 00:09:33.403
that cannot be overemphasized.

00:09:34.240 --> 00:09:38.330
These landscapes that
are falling into this

00:09:39.300 --> 00:09:42.160
or desertifying state,
they're no longer capable

00:09:42.160 --> 00:09:45.310
of being able to provide the basis

00:09:45.310 --> 00:09:47.163
for proper hydrological cycling.

00:09:50.540 --> 00:09:55.540
- The water cycle on planet
water is being broken.

00:10:10.760 --> 00:10:13.090
- The water that falls over the oceans,

00:10:13.090 --> 00:10:17.140
the rainfall is virtually 100% a product

00:10:17.140 --> 00:10:18.630
of evaporation off of the ocean.

00:10:18.630 --> 00:10:22.800
- Salty liquids becoming
distilled freshwater vapors

00:10:22.800 --> 00:10:26.260
that come and congeal into clouds

00:10:26.260 --> 00:10:29.710
and then can come back down as solid snow,

00:10:29.710 --> 00:10:31.630
liquid rain or fog

00:10:31.630 --> 00:10:34.870
and then begin to either
infiltrate into the ground,

00:10:34.870 --> 00:10:37.140
be taken up by plants and animals

00:10:37.140 --> 00:10:40.700
or move back through systems
while they erode out geology

00:10:40.700 --> 00:10:42.533
and back to the ocean.

00:10:51.974 --> 00:10:53.970
There's a whole other water cycle

00:10:53.970 --> 00:10:56.440
that's based on the vegetation.

00:10:56.440 --> 00:10:58.350
- As you begin to move over land,

00:10:58.350 --> 00:11:00.480
you actually have water that forms clouds

00:11:00.480 --> 00:11:02.923
through the movement of
water through plants.

00:11:04.690 --> 00:11:07.073
And as you move farther inland,

00:11:08.580 --> 00:11:12.810
a lot of the water that
falls over large land masses

00:11:12.810 --> 00:11:14.883
is from water that moves through plants.

00:11:18.120 --> 00:11:20.210
- The trees themselves are pulling water

00:11:20.210 --> 00:11:22.080
from the groundwater and they're sweating

00:11:22.080 --> 00:11:25.130
and they hydrate the atmosphere

00:11:25.130 --> 00:11:28.350
and then, that hydrated
atmosphere goes downwind

00:11:28.350 --> 00:11:30.590
and accumulates water and rains itself.

00:11:30.590 --> 00:11:33.910
And so, in the Amazon, the
Amazon trees can sweat,

00:11:33.910 --> 00:11:36.180
make rain, trees can sweat and make rain

00:11:36.180 --> 00:11:38.780
and they're making their
own rain within the forest.

00:11:39.825 --> 00:11:41.845
- Understanding the
importance of vegetation

00:11:41.845 --> 00:11:43.128
in the water cycle is critical

00:11:43.128 --> 00:11:45.820
because there comes a point
to where if you don't have

00:11:45.820 --> 00:11:48.640
any more plants, there's
no more vegetation,

00:11:48.640 --> 00:11:52.808
you've got nothing left
really to transport the water

00:11:52.808 --> 00:11:55.641
from the ground to the atmosphere.

00:12:09.810 --> 00:12:11.910
- When we get rid of vegetation,

00:12:11.910 --> 00:12:13.440
we get rid of the water cycle

00:12:14.410 --> 00:12:17.550
and wherever that happens,
the amount of water vapor

00:12:17.550 --> 00:12:20.820
in the atmosphere of that
place changes dramatically,

00:12:20.820 --> 00:12:23.110
which eventually sends the global climate

00:12:23.110 --> 00:12:24.593
into an erosive spiral.

00:12:25.750 --> 00:12:27.943
And how many Owens Valley are there?

00:12:28.930 --> 00:12:32.310
How much of the Earth's
surface have we pumped dry?

00:12:32.310 --> 00:12:35.870
How many places have we
paved over, plowed over,

00:12:35.870 --> 00:12:38.911
developed, deforested, desertified?

00:12:39.870 --> 00:12:44.537
Can we do modern human life
without this kind of impact?

00:13:16.070 --> 00:13:20.920
- So here we are looking
at urbanized Los Angeles.

00:13:20.920 --> 00:13:23.490
We've paved 2/3 of the city.

00:13:23.490 --> 00:13:25.420
We have here a typical neighborhood.

00:13:25.420 --> 00:13:28.770
So you can see, you know,
it wasn't evil intent

00:13:28.770 --> 00:13:32.690
to create space for humans,
we did what we knew best,

00:13:32.690 --> 00:13:35.070
build our houses, put on our roofs.

00:13:35.070 --> 00:13:36.263
When it rains,

00:13:40.180 --> 00:13:43.360
the building codes in place,
when we built all of LA

00:13:43.360 --> 00:13:46.620
and only reversed within
the last 10 years,

00:13:46.620 --> 00:13:50.350
said all water that falls
on the property must leave.

00:13:50.350 --> 00:13:54.760
And so, here it is coming
on the roof, rain gutters,

00:13:54.760 --> 00:13:57.713
to the driveway, to the street.

00:14:01.680 --> 00:14:04.870
Imagine this is oil leaking out of our car

00:14:04.870 --> 00:14:09.020
or trash flowing down the drains

00:14:10.920 --> 00:14:13.993
into the storm drains.

00:14:14.930 --> 00:14:15.763
Here it comes.

00:14:16.920 --> 00:14:19.393
So this is what the LA
River now looks like.

00:14:21.129 --> 00:14:25.046
And this is the water
flowing off to the ocean.

00:14:33.800 --> 00:14:36.890
- You know, while Los
Angeles is taking water

00:14:36.890 --> 00:14:39.160
from the Colorado and
the Owens River Valley

00:14:39.160 --> 00:14:42.990
and other places, they're
shedding just as much water

00:14:42.990 --> 00:14:47.460
as they're sucking from other
places, it's ridiculous.

00:14:47.460 --> 00:14:50.030
And how ungrateful are they for that

00:14:50.030 --> 00:14:51.363
which falls from the sky.

00:14:52.980 --> 00:14:55.450
- Many people think we're living
in a desert but we're not.

00:14:55.450 --> 00:14:58.670
We, on average, receive
between 10 and 15 inches

00:14:58.670 --> 00:15:00.940
of rainfall a year.

00:15:00.940 --> 00:15:03.360
That 10 to 15 inches of rain is adequate

00:15:03.360 --> 00:15:05.733
to meet our needs in Los Angeles.

00:15:06.580 --> 00:15:08.920
But because of the old paradigm,

00:15:08.920 --> 00:15:12.063
the rain that falls is
thrown away, is removed.

00:15:13.610 --> 00:15:16.470
During a drought, last year when we threw,

00:15:16.470 --> 00:15:19.000
when it rained 9.6 inches,

00:15:19.000 --> 00:15:21.100
we threw away over 30 billion gallons

00:15:21.100 --> 00:15:24.740
or 9,100 and something gallons per person

00:15:24.740 --> 00:15:27.100
for each of the four million people in LA

00:15:27.100 --> 00:15:28.740
that could have been captured.

00:15:28.740 --> 00:15:33.657
Had we done that, we would not
have to be taking the water.

00:15:44.243 --> 00:15:45.076
- Yeah.

00:15:46.643 --> 00:15:48.547
I think it is the Bullock's

00:15:48.547 --> 00:15:52.330
'Cause it's more orange and
the bill is more Oriole.

00:15:52.330 --> 00:15:53.163
- Yeah.

00:15:53.163 --> 00:15:53.996
- Wow.
- Cool.

00:15:53.996 --> 00:15:55.300
- Wow.
- Good eye.

00:15:55.300 --> 00:15:58.050
- Yeah.
- I'd seen it in the tree.

00:16:25.990 --> 00:16:27.030
- So it turns out that it was foggy.

00:16:27.030 --> 00:16:29.810
So much for Mr. Weatherman.

00:16:29.810 --> 00:16:31.000
- I know, it looked foggy.

00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:32.280
He said it was sunny this morning.

00:16:32.280 --> 00:16:34.697
I said, it looks foggy to me.

00:16:49.770 --> 00:16:52.020
What we promote goes, you know,

00:16:52.020 --> 00:16:54.860
against what a lot of conventional

00:16:54.860 --> 00:16:58.570
engineering strategies are,
where it's about pipe and pave

00:16:58.570 --> 00:17:02.890
and move water as quickly in
pipes away from the landscape,

00:17:02.890 --> 00:17:06.670
draining landscapes,
and we're the opposite.

00:17:06.670 --> 00:17:10.590
We slow it down, take
the velocity out of it

00:17:10.590 --> 00:17:13.430
and spread it out on the
landscape and infiltrate it back

00:17:13.430 --> 00:17:17.833
into the earth where it's
recharging the aquifers again.

00:17:19.040 --> 00:17:20.950
You know, sort of remembering our original

00:17:20.950 --> 00:17:25.890
operating instructions
of how to be human again

00:17:25.890 --> 00:17:29.890
in a way that gives back
more than what we take.

00:17:37.080 --> 00:17:39.833
- This is where those
stories of hope come in.

00:17:42.170 --> 00:17:43.650
How do we work with water

00:17:43.650 --> 00:17:45.400
to support the conditions for life?

00:17:47.426 --> 00:17:48.426
- The milkman.

00:18:05.813 --> 00:18:06.646
- Hi, Eve!

00:18:16.520 --> 00:18:19.170
- Every time I drive
past San Antonio Creek

00:18:19.170 --> 00:18:21.320
and Thatcher Creek and the Ventura River

00:18:21.320 --> 00:18:23.290
and I see that they're dry,

00:18:23.290 --> 00:18:26.123
there's something within
me that calls out and says,

00:18:27.130 --> 00:18:28.560
we can do better.

00:18:28.560 --> 00:18:31.500
We can change that paradigm.

00:18:31.500 --> 00:18:33.333
We can be better stewards of water.

00:18:41.060 --> 00:18:44.990
- It isn't logical in any way
to be in a drought situation

00:18:44.990 --> 00:18:48.773
and then let water just totally
pass us by when it comes.

00:18:52.350 --> 00:18:57.350
Because the land is so dry and compacted,

00:18:59.640 --> 00:19:02.510
the water just runs off of it

00:19:02.510 --> 00:19:05.440
and soil, this is actually
an interesting fact,

00:19:05.440 --> 00:19:09.690
soil will not receive
water if its temperature

00:19:09.690 --> 00:19:11.860
is higher than the air temperature.

00:19:11.860 --> 00:19:13.750
So if the soil's hotter than the air,

00:19:13.750 --> 00:19:15.740
it will just repel water.

00:19:15.740 --> 00:19:19.570
So, that's the situation
that we have here.

00:19:19.570 --> 00:19:21.950
We have this dry barren landscape

00:19:21.950 --> 00:19:25.850
that can't even receive
the water that falls on it

00:19:25.850 --> 00:19:29.280
and because of these slopes
that are so compacted

00:19:29.280 --> 00:19:33.420
and some as compacted as roads
that are actually paved over,

00:19:33.420 --> 00:19:35.710
it's just sending water away.

00:19:35.710 --> 00:19:38.250
- We're dealing with
such high velocity water

00:19:38.250 --> 00:19:40.830
that has such a cutting
effect in the landscape

00:19:40.830 --> 00:19:43.800
that we abruptly need to slow it down

00:19:43.800 --> 00:19:45.563
and send it on a longer journey.

00:19:46.890 --> 00:19:49.290
- What we're trying to do
is harvest all that runoff

00:19:49.290 --> 00:19:53.220
and create structures
that slow the water down

00:19:53.220 --> 00:19:55.060
and get it back into the soil again,

00:19:55.060 --> 00:19:57.900
which is really the best place to store

00:19:57.900 --> 00:20:00.067
large quantities of water.

00:20:09.355 --> 00:20:11.083
- I'm just going for it.

00:20:20.400 --> 00:20:22.630
- I don't even know what to say right now.

00:20:23.496 --> 00:20:28.496
- This is safe but it's
about eight inches deep

00:20:28.763 --> 00:20:31.600
over the spillway and
it's about to go over

00:20:31.600 --> 00:20:34.907
its emergency spillway on the right side.

00:20:36.620 --> 00:20:40.980
I hear it often that, "oh,
it never rains in Ojai,"

00:20:40.980 --> 00:20:42.440
you know, "what's the point?"

00:20:42.440 --> 00:20:44.180
Even if we have a low rainfall year

00:20:44.180 --> 00:20:46.700
and we get between 10 and 15 inches,

00:20:46.700 --> 00:20:50.040
this catchment area will
generate enough runoff

00:20:50.040 --> 00:20:55.040
to put water in this pond and
possibly fill the whole thing.

00:21:00.520 --> 00:21:02.545
- Connor, when did the storm start?

00:21:03.826 --> 00:21:07.820
- The storm started about
11 o'clock last night

00:21:08.700 --> 00:21:12.400
and it's about 1:30 in the afternoon.

00:21:12.400 --> 00:21:15.710
This is called Pacific Storm Lucifer.

00:21:16.813 --> 00:21:18.513
It's bringing a lot to light here.

00:21:20.690 --> 00:21:23.740
The spillway was overflowing
eight inches deep

00:21:23.740 --> 00:21:26.730
and 10 feet wide and you know,

00:21:26.730 --> 00:21:29.130
we're walking around trying to get footage

00:21:29.130 --> 00:21:34.130
of this amazing experience
and it's kind of daunting

00:21:34.230 --> 00:21:37.470
that water's entering the
pond at eight different points

00:21:37.470 --> 00:21:41.260
and you know, one single
entry point of water

00:21:41.260 --> 00:21:44.090
from those eight could
have filled the whole thing

00:21:44.090 --> 00:21:46.990
on its own in that amount of time

00:21:46.990 --> 00:21:49.960
and so, we just watched so much,

00:21:49.960 --> 00:21:53.173
so much water leave this landscape.

00:21:57.287 --> 00:22:02.287
Your boots are gonna be so heavy.

00:22:18.110 --> 00:22:22.290
From what was sort of just
like a big hole in the ground

00:22:22.290 --> 00:22:24.683
that seemed like it was gonna be cool,

00:22:25.690 --> 00:22:27.773
it's now...

00:22:28.923 --> 00:22:29.756
this uh,

00:22:31.256 --> 00:22:34.130
amazing mirror of the sky

00:22:34.130 --> 00:22:36.023
and aquatic ecosystem.

00:22:37.070 --> 00:22:42.070
Today, I was just filming,
just with my phone camera,

00:22:43.990 --> 00:22:48.990
some of the early stages of
succession in the aquatic life,

00:22:50.030 --> 00:22:55.030
the little zoo plankton
scurrying around along the banks.

00:22:56.120 --> 00:22:58.710
There's just thousands,
hundreds of thousands,

00:22:58.710 --> 00:23:00.790
millions probably of these life forms

00:23:02.430 --> 00:23:05.953
that have just kind of
come out of nowhere.

00:23:08.040 --> 00:23:10.520
I'm noticing a lot more birds,

00:23:10.520 --> 00:23:12.850
bird population's going up,

00:23:12.850 --> 00:23:14.963
diversity of birds especially.

00:23:19.850 --> 00:23:24.211
When you put a napkin in a glass of water

00:23:24.211 --> 00:23:26.730
and the water climbs up the
napkin, it's the same deal.

00:23:26.730 --> 00:23:30.830
The landscape is the napkin
dipped into the glass of water.

00:23:30.830 --> 00:23:33.670
And so, now it's moving up slope,

00:23:33.670 --> 00:23:36.030
our garden is full of water,

00:23:36.030 --> 00:23:39.053
these slopes are seeping
out water continuously.

00:23:40.590 --> 00:23:43.690
We're finding water emerging
from areas higher up

00:23:43.690 --> 00:23:47.003
in the landscape where I
haven't noticed before.

00:23:50.075 --> 00:23:52.575
- The dogs are having too much fun.

00:23:56.330 --> 00:23:59.060
- Within the next decade,
we could expect to see

00:23:59.060 --> 00:24:03.853
this whole valley greening
up, just from this one event,

00:24:04.835 --> 00:24:08.110
just from bringing water back

00:24:08.110 --> 00:24:09.880
and that's the magic of water,

00:24:09.880 --> 00:24:14.880
is that you help a landscape
to receive water and hold it

00:24:16.430 --> 00:24:20.190
and then, nature does the rest of the work

00:24:20.190 --> 00:24:22.620
because water is the source of life

00:24:22.620 --> 00:24:27.370
and so, that's the first step,
just let the water return.

00:24:50.170 --> 00:24:53.610
- By about day five, I had
settled into the slowness

00:24:53.610 --> 00:24:58.440
of things, the dry heat, the
repetitive steps, the routines

00:24:59.340 --> 00:25:03.100
and at that point, the aqueduct
was mostly underground.

00:25:03.100 --> 00:25:05.220
Many millions of gallons of water

00:25:05.220 --> 00:25:07.003
rushing silently under our feet.

00:25:08.650 --> 00:25:10.660
We wouldn't actually see that water again

00:25:10.660 --> 00:25:13.623
until we made it to the
cascades just outside of LA.

00:25:15.840 --> 00:25:20.020
- I've been constantly amazed
at how much more I've learnt

00:25:20.020 --> 00:25:23.263
about my surroundings by
just being at walking pace.

00:25:24.340 --> 00:25:28.700
And I've also discovered much
to my delight and amusement

00:25:29.570 --> 00:25:32.760
that everywhere is in walking distance

00:25:32.760 --> 00:25:35.044
if you give it enough time.

00:25:35.044 --> 00:25:36.760
Look at this beautiful little bird.

00:25:39.760 --> 00:25:44.760
I think walking at the time
honored pace of our ancestors,

00:25:44.810 --> 00:25:47.170
you know, slowing down like this,

00:25:47.170 --> 00:25:51.337
you become truly connected
to all life around you.

00:25:58.500 --> 00:26:03.500
- You know in wilderness, in
first responder in a crisis,

00:26:03.500 --> 00:26:06.410
the person who's looking
to stop the bleeding

00:26:06.410 --> 00:26:10.270
needs to be calm and present and slow down

00:26:10.270 --> 00:26:14.680
in order to be with the
healing of that wound.

00:26:14.680 --> 00:26:16.990
So, we're walking in that way

00:26:16.990 --> 00:26:20.243
and bearing witness is part of that way.

00:26:26.810 --> 00:26:30.120
- The city of Los Angeles
allowed Owens Lake

00:26:30.120 --> 00:26:31.523
to go completely dry.

00:26:32.660 --> 00:26:36.040
The result of that was
a perennial dust storm.

00:26:36.040 --> 00:26:41.040
That dust storm was identified
as the largest source

00:26:41.700 --> 00:26:44.483
of what they call PM10 in the world,

00:26:45.480 --> 00:26:48.590
which is particulate matter that,

00:26:48.590 --> 00:26:50.920
some of which is heavy metals and poisons

00:26:50.920 --> 00:26:53.980
that are carcinogenic.

00:26:53.980 --> 00:26:56.260
The federal government and
the state of California

00:26:56.260 --> 00:27:01.207
at some point made DWP,
the city of Los Angeles

00:27:02.180 --> 00:27:05.920
mitigate those dust storms.

00:27:05.920 --> 00:27:10.310
They have now spent over a
billion dollars mitigating

00:27:10.310 --> 00:27:14.650
by flooding some sections,
establishing some bird habitat

00:27:14.650 --> 00:27:18.023
but mostly putting gravel on.

00:27:22.710 --> 00:27:25.140
- They're tearing down the
whole mountainside up here

00:27:25.140 --> 00:27:26.703
to put gravel out here.

00:27:29.060 --> 00:27:32.280
We are where we've been
for thousands of years

00:27:32.280 --> 00:27:35.050
and I wake up every morning
and I look at the mountains

00:27:35.050 --> 00:27:39.010
and go, that's the same
exact view that my ancestors

00:27:39.010 --> 00:27:41.280
have looked at for thousands of years

00:27:41.280 --> 00:27:43.270
and to me, that means a lot.

00:27:43.270 --> 00:27:48.160
Our creation stories are
all based on this land

00:27:48.160 --> 00:27:51.540
and where we are and I stress to people,

00:27:51.540 --> 00:27:55.260
how do I teach my
grandchildren about who we are

00:27:55.260 --> 00:27:57.340
and to be proud of who we are

00:27:57.340 --> 00:27:59.700
when those things no longer exist?

00:27:59.700 --> 00:28:03.725
There's no stories left
because those things are gone

00:28:03.725 --> 00:28:06.242
and when you've destroyed that

00:28:08.483 --> 00:28:10.310
basic place,

00:28:10.310 --> 00:28:13.260
sense of place, "who are you,"

00:28:13.260 --> 00:28:14.760
is a big question.

00:28:33.300 --> 00:28:35.590
- We've changed the surface of the Earth

00:28:35.590 --> 00:28:37.163
in some pretty major ways,

00:28:39.060 --> 00:28:42.563
erasing the stories that make
a place home and habitable.

00:28:44.600 --> 00:28:48.170
We've already turned nearly
half of the livable planet

00:28:48.170 --> 00:28:50.337
into farmland and pasture.

00:28:56.780 --> 00:29:01.130
- Okay, so a healthy functioning soil

00:29:04.190 --> 00:29:08.396
effectively operates as a sponge does,

00:29:08.396 --> 00:29:09.763
it's kind of in the same manner.

00:29:11.670 --> 00:29:15.830
You have decomposed organic
matter, kind of a humus.

00:29:15.830 --> 00:29:19.690
You've got clay, you've
got silt, sand, loam,

00:29:19.690 --> 00:29:24.390
you have all of these different
parts in certain percentages

00:29:25.900 --> 00:29:27.530
that you'll find in different soils.

00:29:27.530 --> 00:29:31.160
But it's the organic
matter content and the life

00:29:31.160 --> 00:29:34.460
that accompanies that organic
matter that allows for you

00:29:34.460 --> 00:29:38.353
to be able to store a
certain amount of water.

00:29:40.075 --> 00:29:42.650
- You have to have the bacteria and fungi.

00:29:42.650 --> 00:29:46.660
Those organisms glue
themselves onto surfaces.

00:29:46.660 --> 00:29:48.760
They're gonna glue themselves onto sands,

00:29:48.760 --> 00:29:51.950
onto silts, onto clays,
onto organic material

00:29:51.950 --> 00:29:54.500
and they start holding things around them.

00:29:54.500 --> 00:29:57.410
It's gonna start building this aggregate.

00:29:57.410 --> 00:30:00.900
And inside that aggregate,
all those little pores,

00:30:00.900 --> 00:30:04.460
all those little spaces can hold water,

00:30:04.460 --> 00:30:07.280
which of course is now
accessible to the root.

00:30:07.280 --> 00:30:09.560
And your plant's going to get that water.

00:30:09.560 --> 00:30:12.990
Even though it may have
been dead dry for, you know,

00:30:12.990 --> 00:30:17.700
10 days, 50 days, 90 days above ground,

00:30:17.700 --> 00:30:22.170
there's still water inside
these microaggregates

00:30:22.170 --> 00:30:23.993
that your plant can get hold of.

00:30:28.160 --> 00:30:32.010
Fungi, as they're growing,
they grow as long strands,

00:30:32.010 --> 00:30:33.260
they're threads.

00:30:33.260 --> 00:30:35.560
And so, they're gonna take
this little microaggregate

00:30:35.560 --> 00:30:37.860
with the bacterial community in there

00:30:37.860 --> 00:30:40.590
and it's gonna pull that
in with one of its threads

00:30:40.590 --> 00:30:42.850
and over here, it's
pulling something else in

00:30:42.850 --> 00:30:44.580
and pulling that in and pulling that in

00:30:44.580 --> 00:30:47.310
and now we're making macroaggregates.

00:30:47.310 --> 00:30:49.960
Bacteria make microaggregates,

00:30:49.960 --> 00:30:53.280
fungi pull all those
microaggregates together

00:30:53.280 --> 00:30:55.240
and build macroaggregates.

00:30:55.240 --> 00:30:59.250
Now, think of all the air
passageways, all the hallways,

00:30:59.250 --> 00:31:03.107
all of that volume that
can get filled with water

00:31:03.107 --> 00:31:04.357
and hold water.

00:31:19.820 --> 00:31:21.883
You have to have the right biology.

00:31:23.900 --> 00:31:27.850
But modern agriculture
has killed those organisms

00:31:27.850 --> 00:31:29.660
by tilling too much,

00:31:29.660 --> 00:31:32.663
by using manures that are high in salts.

00:31:34.910 --> 00:31:37.360
Those organisms that we
require have been killed.

00:31:38.900 --> 00:31:43.890
- You basically have taken
living carbon rich soils

00:31:43.890 --> 00:31:47.740
and killed them through excessive tillage

00:31:47.740 --> 00:31:51.160
and use of chemicals into just dead dirt

00:31:51.160 --> 00:31:53.250
instead of living soil.

00:31:53.250 --> 00:31:55.810
And now, you have to basically supplement,

00:31:55.810 --> 00:31:58.550
you put those systems on
a form of life support.

00:31:58.550 --> 00:32:00.743
It's chemotherapy basically.

00:32:02.910 --> 00:32:04.780
- The water that falls from the sky free,

00:32:04.780 --> 00:32:07.860
it all gets shunted off because
the soil quality is so poor,

00:32:07.860 --> 00:32:09.267
it can't hold that water.

00:32:09.267 --> 00:32:11.600
And of course, when water leaves the farm,

00:32:11.600 --> 00:32:13.433
it takes soil with it.

00:32:19.930 --> 00:32:22.430
- Beautiful morning, isn't it?

00:32:30.650 --> 00:32:32.937
- We were never farmers.

00:32:32.937 --> 00:32:34.120
And we weren't trained as farmers

00:32:34.120 --> 00:32:36.150
and that's probably the blessing,

00:32:36.150 --> 00:32:37.950
is that, we were never trained as farmers

00:32:37.950 --> 00:32:39.230
and didn't have a farming background,

00:32:39.230 --> 00:32:43.393
so we came at it as ecologists,
as land regenerators.

00:32:49.390 --> 00:32:51.180
If you have bare and exposed soil,

00:32:51.180 --> 00:32:52.790
you're gonna have wind and sun both

00:32:52.790 --> 00:32:54.530
that'll help volatilize the nutrients

00:32:54.530 --> 00:32:56.320
and moisture out of the soil,

00:32:56.320 --> 00:32:58.350
desiccating it and robbing
it of its nutrients

00:32:58.350 --> 00:33:01.430
and it will also make the soil
get much hotter in daytime

00:33:01.430 --> 00:33:04.150
and colder at night because
it's bare and exposed.

00:33:04.150 --> 00:33:05.520
The microbiology in the soil

00:33:05.520 --> 00:33:07.150
doesn't like those temperature shifts.

00:33:07.150 --> 00:33:09.240
So simply, the top few inches of soil

00:33:09.240 --> 00:33:12.820
become inhabitable to microbiology.

00:33:12.820 --> 00:33:14.040
What does tillage do?

00:33:14.040 --> 00:33:16.623
It makes bare and exposed soil.

00:33:25.730 --> 00:33:28.493
- Yeah, we need small
leaves for the braising mix.

00:33:30.110 --> 00:33:32.900
- So, those are still good to bunch up

00:33:32.900 --> 00:33:34.890
and we'll use those bunches
for either family boxes

00:33:34.890 --> 00:33:37.063
or for weekend farmer's
market, something like that.

00:33:39.840 --> 00:33:43.050
- No bare soil anywhere,
having constant vegetable cover

00:33:43.050 --> 00:33:45.320
in our beds every single day of the year,

00:33:45.320 --> 00:33:47.420
having these mounded beds with
super high organic matter,

00:33:47.420 --> 00:33:48.770
so that no water can move

00:33:48.770 --> 00:33:51.270
and then everything that's
not a bed is either a hedgerow

00:33:51.270 --> 00:33:53.310
or a green grassed roadway or pathway.

00:33:53.310 --> 00:33:55.710
There is no bare soil,
there are no bare roads

00:33:55.710 --> 00:33:56.970
and bare dirt areas.

00:33:56.970 --> 00:33:59.140
We really make sure to have
constant cover on the soil,

00:33:59.140 --> 00:34:02.640
so that no soil can move and
become erosion and sediment.

00:34:02.640 --> 00:34:05.030
It's all locked up and
bound up by the roots

00:34:05.030 --> 00:34:06.133
of the various plants.

00:34:08.910 --> 00:34:10.280
These tomatoes and lettuces were planted

00:34:10.280 --> 00:34:11.550
about two weeks ago.

00:34:11.550 --> 00:34:14.720
On that day, we actually had
a cauliflower crop in this bed

00:34:14.720 --> 00:34:16.980
and that cauliflower was
harvested in the morning

00:34:16.980 --> 00:34:20.300
and then we cut the cauliflower
plants off at ground level

00:34:20.300 --> 00:34:21.390
or just below ground level,

00:34:21.390 --> 00:34:23.247
leaving the entire root structure intact

00:34:23.247 --> 00:34:26.390
and the entire rhizosphere
around that root structure intact

00:34:26.390 --> 00:34:28.790
and healthy and still
interacting with the roots.

00:34:28.790 --> 00:34:30.420
Then, we put down a
fresh layer of compost,

00:34:30.420 --> 00:34:32.700
about a half an inch, and
transplanted the tomatoes

00:34:32.700 --> 00:34:36.310
and the lettuces same day
as the cauliflower came out.

00:34:36.310 --> 00:34:38.600
So while you have this entire
cauliflower root structure

00:34:38.600 --> 00:34:41.200
still intact in the ground
with a healthy rhizosphere,

00:34:41.200 --> 00:34:45.150
we've just added new fresh
roots all over the bed

00:34:45.150 --> 00:34:46.750
to interact with the same rhizosphere,

00:34:46.750 --> 00:34:49.410
creating this continuity of soil health

00:34:49.410 --> 00:34:51.770
that's never getting disturbed,
never getting affected,

00:34:51.770 --> 00:34:54.020
never getting plowed or
tilled or blended up.

00:35:00.700 --> 00:35:04.090
That was a perfect example of
what we do 95% of the time.

00:35:04.090 --> 00:35:06.000
But there are those times, like over here,

00:35:06.000 --> 00:35:09.150
where we had a bed that
overwintered with cabbages

00:35:09.150 --> 00:35:11.780
and it overwintered and it got very weedy

00:35:11.780 --> 00:35:14.330
and unfortunately, we didn't
wanna have to pull out

00:35:14.330 --> 00:35:16.450
all the weeds because
if you pull out weeds,

00:35:16.450 --> 00:35:19.110
you're removing all the
topsoil with the weed roots

00:35:19.110 --> 00:35:20.510
and if you cut off the weeds,

00:35:20.510 --> 00:35:22.530
well, they regrow better
than the vegetables do.

00:35:22.530 --> 00:35:25.000
So in that case, this
bed, we're reclaiming it

00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:28.770
through covering it with a
breathable landscape fabric.

00:35:28.770 --> 00:35:31.420
So there's still oxygen
and gaseous exchange,

00:35:31.420 --> 00:35:32.930
there's still moisture exchange

00:35:32.930 --> 00:35:36.670
and yet, the blocking of
sunlight is gonna decompose

00:35:36.670 --> 00:35:38.840
all the weeds in place,

00:35:38.840 --> 00:35:41.540
so that after three or four
weeks of having a cover on,

00:35:41.540 --> 00:35:42.950
we can peel back that cover

00:35:42.950 --> 00:35:45.280
and the bed will be
completely clear and clean

00:35:45.280 --> 00:35:47.670
and the soil will be like chocolate cake.

00:35:47.670 --> 00:35:50.580
It'll be so gorgeous and
so dark and so healthy

00:35:50.580 --> 00:35:53.210
and so full of biology and moisture.

00:35:53.210 --> 00:35:55.070
And so, once that cover's been there

00:35:55.070 --> 00:35:57.070
for three or four weeks, peel it off,

00:35:57.070 --> 00:35:58.410
put down a half inch of compost

00:35:58.410 --> 00:36:01.095
and transplant the next
crop right in there.

00:36:01.095 --> 00:36:03.113
- Is there one that we
could peel off and dig in?

00:36:04.430 --> 00:36:07.230
- Probably not at this time

00:36:07.230 --> 00:36:10.900
because none of them have
been covered for very long.

00:36:10.900 --> 00:36:13.633
But this is a possibility right here.

00:36:15.182 --> 00:36:16.580
- Okay, so this is an example

00:36:16.580 --> 00:36:19.030
of what might happen
after a couple of weeks.

00:36:19.030 --> 00:36:21.380
You can still see some of
the weeds are still there

00:36:21.380 --> 00:36:24.740
and growing but they're very
much yellowing in place.

00:36:24.740 --> 00:36:28.630
You can see there's quite a
lot of life happening in here.

00:36:28.630 --> 00:36:30.307
- Jesus, look at that.

00:36:30.307 --> 00:36:32.600
- And you can see the soil looks

00:36:32.600 --> 00:36:34.093
just like the chocolate cake.

00:36:35.400 --> 00:36:37.650
- That's what you wanna have
your growing soil look like

00:36:37.650 --> 00:36:40.150
all the way down, 12 inches down.

00:36:40.150 --> 00:36:42.470
Just beautiful healthy rich soil.

00:36:42.470 --> 00:36:45.490
- So we might not even have
to add compost to this,

00:36:45.490 --> 00:36:48.790
especially if we're doing quick crops,

00:36:48.790 --> 00:36:51.400
we might just plant straight into it.

00:36:51.400 --> 00:36:52.495
Unfortunately you didn't find a worm

00:36:52.495 --> 00:36:53.328
when you were doing that.

00:36:53.328 --> 00:36:57.495
- I was looking.

00:37:10.080 --> 00:37:12.180
It's all about having photosynthesis.

00:37:12.180 --> 00:37:14.590
It's taking atmospheric carbon
that we have too much of

00:37:14.590 --> 00:37:16.850
and sunlight, which is free and abundant,

00:37:16.850 --> 00:37:18.290
and creating nutrient packets

00:37:18.290 --> 00:37:20.420
through photosynthesis inside the plants.

00:37:20.420 --> 00:37:23.770
Those nutrient packets are
then reformed into amino acids

00:37:23.770 --> 00:37:26.270
and fatty acids and waxes
and proteins, carbohydrates

00:37:26.270 --> 00:37:28.030
and all different kinds
of nutrient packets.

00:37:28.030 --> 00:37:30.220
Almost a half of those same
nutrient packets they make,

00:37:30.220 --> 00:37:32.028
they actually exude through the roots

00:37:32.028 --> 00:37:34.000
to feed the soil biology.

00:37:34.000 --> 00:37:35.940
So if you wanna create healthy soil,

00:37:35.940 --> 00:37:37.530
disturb it as little as possible,

00:37:37.530 --> 00:37:38.950
keep it covered and protected

00:37:38.950 --> 00:37:41.350
and keep green living
plants in it all the time.

00:37:44.400 --> 00:37:47.640
So we're using maybe
1/7 or 1/8 of the water

00:37:47.640 --> 00:37:50.540
that we used to use for the same crops

00:37:50.540 --> 00:37:54.640
and the same irrigation
system but different soil now.

00:37:54.640 --> 00:37:58.670
We are also able to dry
farm plenty of our crops,

00:37:58.670 --> 00:38:00.470
as well as dry farm all of our fruit trees

00:38:00.470 --> 00:38:01.633
and our hedgerows.

00:38:03.040 --> 00:38:04.430
We're harvesting 52 weeks a year,

00:38:04.430 --> 00:38:06.230
we're transplanting 52 weeks a year,

00:38:06.230 --> 00:38:08.680
we're sowing seeds in the
greenhouse 52 weeks a year,

00:38:08.680 --> 00:38:09.920
just on three acres.

00:38:09.920 --> 00:38:12.900
so really, our productivity on our acreage

00:38:12.900 --> 00:38:15.800
matches that of a 15 to 25-acre farm.

00:38:15.800 --> 00:38:18.510
And so, rather than having a
hundred and thousand-acre farms

00:38:18.510 --> 00:38:20.110
doing no till vegetable production,

00:38:20.110 --> 00:38:23.210
why don't we have 100
one to three-acre farms

00:38:23.210 --> 00:38:26.120
that are within city limits
providing food locally,

00:38:26.120 --> 00:38:28.950
so cut out transportation
costs, cut out fuels costs

00:38:28.950 --> 00:38:30.630
and start hiring the local
people in the community

00:38:30.630 --> 00:38:33.260
to grow the food for that community.

00:38:33.260 --> 00:38:36.300
- You know, this is
probably a few acres of land

00:38:36.300 --> 00:38:39.260
that, you know, if this was managed

00:38:39.260 --> 00:38:44.260
in a very sort of intentional
focused particular way,

00:38:46.760 --> 00:38:51.760
this space could not only be
say ecologically functional

00:38:52.940 --> 00:38:57.940
but it could also be a means
of feeding a sizable portion

00:38:58.790 --> 00:39:01.540
of the folks who live in this part of town

00:39:01.540 --> 00:39:06.180
and we could repeat that through
various parts of the city.

00:39:06.180 --> 00:39:09.710
And every city has a version of,

00:39:09.710 --> 00:39:12.377
has some variation on the theme.

00:39:24.048 --> 00:39:27.346
- So today is day 14,
I think, if I'm right.

00:39:27.346 --> 00:39:28.179
- Day what?

00:39:28.179 --> 00:39:29.012
- Day 14.

00:40:08.614 --> 00:40:10.381
- Wow, my God.

00:40:23.630 --> 00:40:25.630
- So what we can do now?

00:40:59.660 --> 00:41:01.780
- As a result of broken water cycles,

00:41:01.780 --> 00:41:06.630
we have longer droughts,
hotter days and heavier winds

00:41:06.630 --> 00:41:09.893
that give rise to more
frequent and intense wildfires.

00:41:11.090 --> 00:41:12.850
Though, this isn't the only reason

00:41:12.850 --> 00:41:15.433
they're burning out of control.

00:41:40.260 --> 00:41:44.650
- And let's see, we got the road closed

00:41:44.650 --> 00:41:46.063
sitch here.

00:41:48.000 --> 00:41:49.917
What do you guys think?

00:42:09.445 --> 00:42:14.310
We were sleeping, and our house phone rang

00:42:14.310 --> 00:42:16.180
at 5:00 in the morning.

00:42:16.180 --> 00:42:19.970
And my wife Lauren and I, we
both had the same thought.

00:42:19.970 --> 00:42:22.980
Well, if it's an emergency,
they'll call back.

00:42:22.980 --> 00:42:25.450
And two minutes later, it rang again.

00:42:25.450 --> 00:42:27.273
- Oh wow.
- I was like, oop...

00:42:27.273 --> 00:42:29.810
We're eyes open in bed.

00:42:29.810 --> 00:42:32.670
Lauren went and picked up the phone,

00:42:32.670 --> 00:42:35.337
and it was my sister saying,

00:42:35.337 --> 00:42:36.727
"We're packing up, we're on our way."

00:42:36.727 --> 00:42:39.327
"Santa Rosa is on fire. We
need to get out of here."

00:42:45.490 --> 00:42:49.430
You think it's not that big,

00:42:49.430 --> 00:42:51.460
they'll be able to put that out.

00:42:51.460 --> 00:42:53.273
That's your first thought is,

00:42:54.870 --> 00:42:56.990
this will just pass today, or something.

00:42:56.990 --> 00:42:58.240
- Where you at?

00:43:01.352 --> 00:43:02.428
- Come on!

00:43:02.428 --> 00:43:06.169
- Right, right, let me get
her feet, let me get her feet!

00:43:06.169 --> 00:43:08.919
- Her husband's right behind you!

00:43:13.120 --> 00:43:15.263
- It's been waiting for its moment,

00:43:16.786 --> 00:43:19.953
being that we're in this fire ecology.

00:43:31.720 --> 00:43:34.270
- We've forgotten that we
have an important role to play

00:43:34.270 --> 00:43:36.880
in managing these ecosystems,

00:43:36.880 --> 00:43:39.500
and that our care for water and fire

00:43:39.500 --> 00:43:40.773
eventually come together.

00:43:44.810 --> 00:43:46.680
- When there's no management,

00:43:46.680 --> 00:43:50.270
and all these young, little
trees have a chance to grow up,

00:43:50.270 --> 00:43:52.210
they start crowding each other out.

00:43:52.210 --> 00:43:54.070
And as they crowd each other out,

00:43:54.070 --> 00:43:55.810
some of them start to get a little sickly,

00:43:55.810 --> 00:43:57.700
some of them start to die off,

00:43:57.700 --> 00:43:59.943
and they create these fire ladders.

00:44:02.330 --> 00:44:06.430
We've got a fir tree growing in the shade

00:44:06.430 --> 00:44:11.430
of other firs and oaks, and
it has all these low branches.

00:44:11.880 --> 00:44:14.220
And look at this, these branches,

00:44:14.220 --> 00:44:17.170
they can't survive in the
shade, so they just die.

00:44:17.170 --> 00:44:22.170
And it's essentially a ladder
that the fire can follow

00:44:22.170 --> 00:44:26.533
right up into the crown of the tree.

00:44:29.583 --> 00:44:34.340
For thousands of years, these ecosystems

00:44:34.340 --> 00:44:38.303
were managed by a whole
set of different organisms.

00:44:39.770 --> 00:44:43.630
The grizzly bear used to be
throughout all of California.

00:44:43.630 --> 00:44:47.020
They'll get into these
little, rotting trees

00:44:47.020 --> 00:44:48.510
and they'll break 'em under the ground,

00:44:48.510 --> 00:44:50.650
and they'll rip 'em up,
and they'll look for grubs,

00:44:50.650 --> 00:44:52.830
and they'll look for mushrooms.

00:44:52.830 --> 00:44:55.850
And they're part of that
understory management.

00:44:55.850 --> 00:44:58.110
So we don't have bear doing that.

00:44:58.110 --> 00:45:01.770
In the grasslands, we
don't have our herds of elk

00:45:01.770 --> 00:45:04.140
that we used to have, and our antelope,

00:45:04.140 --> 00:45:07.810
that would stomp the
grass into the ground.

00:45:07.810 --> 00:45:11.070
That would manage that thatch layer,

00:45:11.070 --> 00:45:15.020
that buildup of organic
matter that happens over time.

00:45:15.020 --> 00:45:16.543
So without those big animals,

00:45:17.630 --> 00:45:20.483
we don't get that management regime again.

00:45:21.650 --> 00:45:24.853
And we've taken the land away
from the indigenous people.

00:45:26.119 --> 00:45:30.300
And the indigenous
people of these ecologies

00:45:30.300 --> 00:45:31.803
understood the role of fire.

00:45:32.740 --> 00:45:35.776
And they knew the right time of year

00:45:35.776 --> 00:45:39.150
to provide a healing fire.

00:45:39.150 --> 00:45:43.220
A fire that slowly moves
through the understory,

00:45:43.220 --> 00:45:47.240
that consumes a lot of that underbrush,

00:45:47.240 --> 00:45:50.880
that would, in a big fire,
go up into those canopies.

00:45:50.880 --> 00:45:53.370
So it's part of that fuel load reduction.

00:45:53.370 --> 00:45:57.320
It alkalinizes the soil.
It removes disease.

00:45:57.320 --> 00:45:59.510
There's so many benefits
to a healing fire.

00:45:59.510 --> 00:46:01.810
This isn't one of those healing fires.

00:46:10.900 --> 00:46:14.330
So we're here on the
side that hasn't burned.

00:46:14.330 --> 00:46:17.323
There's a lot of material here. A lot.

00:46:18.460 --> 00:46:20.190
And so if a fire blows through,

00:46:20.190 --> 00:46:21.950
like it did on that hillside,

00:46:21.950 --> 00:46:24.550
it's just going to have
all of this material

00:46:24.550 --> 00:46:28.300
to fuel that fire and get
it up into the forest,

00:46:28.300 --> 00:46:31.170
which is, of course,
scary and catastrophic.

00:46:31.170 --> 00:46:33.640
So this is kind of an example,

00:46:33.640 --> 00:46:34.870
because here's the other challenge,

00:46:34.870 --> 00:46:37.710
is that because all this
material is aerial now,

00:46:37.710 --> 00:46:39.430
it's just sort of oxidized.

00:46:39.430 --> 00:46:43.470
So this actually represents
carbon right here.

00:46:43.470 --> 00:46:48.470
This represents what
could be top soil, right?

00:46:49.200 --> 00:46:52.410
The sponge of the earth
that can absorb water.

00:46:52.410 --> 00:46:55.440
But because this material
is just up here in the air,

00:46:55.440 --> 00:46:57.950
it can't actually break down,

00:46:57.950 --> 00:47:00.520
and so it has a hard time turning to soil.

00:47:00.520 --> 00:47:04.210
So what the elk would do, is
would actually come in here

00:47:04.210 --> 00:47:08.180
and smash this material down
to the ground, to the surface,

00:47:08.180 --> 00:47:10.630
where during the winter,
that water could wick up

00:47:10.630 --> 00:47:12.200
and there'd be biological activity,

00:47:12.200 --> 00:47:13.380
and it could actually decompose.

00:47:13.380 --> 00:47:15.100
Not to mention that elk
would come and actually

00:47:15.100 --> 00:47:18.570
munch this back, so provide
that grazing function.

00:47:18.570 --> 00:47:22.760
So in this grassland, we have
all of this potential soil,

00:47:22.760 --> 00:47:25.925
all of this carbon, which at this point

00:47:25.925 --> 00:47:29.480
is very low function, right?

00:47:29.480 --> 00:47:32.333
It's just waiting here for a fire.

00:47:52.583 --> 00:47:55.600
- We've pretty intensely
reduced the population of elk

00:47:55.600 --> 00:47:57.470
and other wild animals.

00:47:57.470 --> 00:48:00.890
And now grasslands are
in a dangerous decline.

00:48:00.890 --> 00:48:05.143
They're primed for fire
and drained of water.

00:48:05.143 --> 00:48:07.270
- I wanna get some pipe just hooked up

00:48:07.270 --> 00:48:10.080
to the ag tote en route,
so I can test its flow.

00:48:10.930 --> 00:48:13.096
I actually grazed all that,
too. Those are the Bald Hills.

00:48:23.090 --> 00:48:26.130
I've seen how a land can just wake up

00:48:26.130 --> 00:48:28.650
with thoughtful disturbance.

00:48:28.650 --> 00:48:30.400
Shift things just a little bit,

00:48:30.400 --> 00:48:32.513
and watch water tables lift.

00:48:38.220 --> 00:48:39.053
Hi, cutie pie!

00:48:41.880 --> 00:48:43.870
Usually when I don't want
them to pay attention to me,

00:48:43.870 --> 00:48:46.973
I kind of loaf past them,

00:48:48.350 --> 00:48:49.800
and I don't make eye contact.

00:48:51.030 --> 00:48:53.933
And that way, they don't think
I have any specific agenda.

00:48:55.060 --> 00:48:58.477
But secretly I do have a specific agenda.

00:49:04.631 --> 00:49:08.400
Grasses coevolved by being
grazed and sometimes burned

00:49:08.400 --> 00:49:12.700
by having literal tons of
animals removing biomass,

00:49:12.700 --> 00:49:16.620
digesting it, dropping it
in the form of their dung

00:49:16.620 --> 00:49:19.200
and their urine, and
knocking everything else

00:49:19.200 --> 00:49:20.463
down in their wake.

00:49:27.040 --> 00:49:30.960
This right here, if it
were not grazed this year

00:49:30.960 --> 00:49:33.080
would be considered thatch.

00:49:33.080 --> 00:49:37.545
Grass that has grown up and is not

00:49:37.545 --> 00:49:40.723
trampled, grazed or burned.

00:49:41.650 --> 00:49:43.140
You look at it, you'll see what looks

00:49:43.140 --> 00:49:45.660
like a healthy stand of
grass, but if you look at it,

00:49:45.660 --> 00:49:48.540
a lot of times there's
actually exposed soil

00:49:48.540 --> 00:49:51.860
between every individual blade of grass.

00:49:51.860 --> 00:49:54.240
If a grassland is grazed well,

00:49:54.240 --> 00:49:58.190
the carbon and all the nutrients
that are here in the grass

00:49:58.190 --> 00:50:01.060
are being fed down into the soil.

00:50:01.060 --> 00:50:05.910
And when you put organic matter
onto soil year after year,

00:50:05.910 --> 00:50:07.680
when it's dry and when it's wet,

00:50:07.680 --> 00:50:09.340
in these different times
and different ways,

00:50:09.340 --> 00:50:12.290
just keep cycling this
stuff back to the soil,

00:50:12.290 --> 00:50:13.830
the more water that you can hold,

00:50:13.830 --> 00:50:17.080
and the longer you can hold that water.

00:50:22.090 --> 00:50:25.463
All grassland needs good
grazing to be healthy.

00:50:26.610 --> 00:50:28.483
And not all grazing is created equal.

00:50:32.200 --> 00:50:35.420
A lot of ranch land and
range land is grazed in a way

00:50:35.420 --> 00:50:37.150
where the cows have pretty much

00:50:37.150 --> 00:50:39.800
continuous access to the grass.

00:50:39.800 --> 00:50:43.143
If not for a whole season,
for the whole year.

00:50:44.400 --> 00:50:46.900
That means that as soon as a species

00:50:46.900 --> 00:50:49.030
of plant starts to grow, it's eaten.

00:50:49.030 --> 00:50:51.960
And if it starts to regrow,
it's eventually eaten.

00:50:51.960 --> 00:50:54.930
So its ability and opportunity to grow

00:50:54.930 --> 00:50:58.590
to maturation, to flower, to senescence

00:50:58.590 --> 00:51:02.016
and disperse its seeds is collapsed.

00:51:02.016 --> 00:51:03.863
The odds are against it.

00:51:05.450 --> 00:51:10.110
You can have a rain event that's
five inches in a few hours

00:51:10.110 --> 00:51:11.550
fall on a grassland.

00:51:11.550 --> 00:51:14.880
But if that grassland has been
in decline for a long time,

00:51:14.880 --> 00:51:17.710
than there might be a lot of bare ground,

00:51:17.710 --> 00:51:20.070
there might be a lot of old plants.

00:51:20.070 --> 00:51:23.520
That rain is just gonna
keep hammering that ground,

00:51:23.520 --> 00:51:26.093
compress it, then just run off.

00:51:26.993 --> 00:51:31.160
Such that it's not in our
watershed for very long.

00:51:58.440 --> 00:52:01.140
So I want plants to be able to grow

00:52:01.140 --> 00:52:03.730
to their full reproductive capacity.

00:52:03.730 --> 00:52:06.330
I want them to be able to fully recover

00:52:06.330 --> 00:52:08.420
before they're grazed again.

00:52:08.420 --> 00:52:10.540
And a fundamental part of plant grazing

00:52:10.540 --> 00:52:12.640
is keeping animals on the move.

00:52:12.640 --> 00:52:15.193
So instead of having
cows scattered throughout

00:52:15.193 --> 00:52:18.490
a 400 acre pasture four
months out of the year,

00:52:18.490 --> 00:52:20.390
I'll have them in a much smaller pasture

00:52:20.390 --> 00:52:23.050
for maybe just a day or a few hours,

00:52:23.050 --> 00:52:25.240
and then I keep moving them.

00:52:25.240 --> 00:52:27.660
So what that means is
that all of the grassland

00:52:27.660 --> 00:52:29.327
surrounding where the cows are

00:52:29.327 --> 00:52:32.360
gets that much more time to recover,

00:52:32.360 --> 00:52:35.410
such that the soil is
becoming more rich in carbon,

00:52:35.410 --> 00:52:37.060
more rich in organic matter,

00:52:37.060 --> 00:52:40.477
and the species diversity is increasing.

00:52:43.322 --> 00:52:45.613
It's the notion of slow it,
spread it, sink it, right?

00:52:47.155 --> 00:52:50.850
When rain hits a layer of litter

00:52:50.850 --> 00:52:53.300
instead of bare ground or thatch,

00:52:53.300 --> 00:52:54.870
the particles are broken up.

00:52:54.870 --> 00:52:58.970
They're actually smaller
in size and can percolate

00:52:58.970 --> 00:53:01.970
and infiltrate into the
soil at a slower rate.

00:53:01.970 --> 00:53:05.100
So instead of just washing, in this case,

00:53:05.100 --> 00:53:09.090
into Martin Creek, which runs eventually

00:53:09.090 --> 00:53:09.960
into the Russian River

00:53:09.960 --> 00:53:13.910
and rushes towards our
coast and the headlands.

00:53:13.910 --> 00:53:15.610
It's actually...

00:53:15.610 --> 00:53:17.980
A lot of it is infiltrating into the soil,

00:53:17.980 --> 00:53:19.740
hanging out there for longer.

00:53:19.740 --> 00:53:24.724
Slowly leaving, slowing
percolating into our aquifer.

00:53:24.724 --> 00:53:27.650
The water table rises over time.

00:53:27.650 --> 00:53:30.300
Plants are greener later into the year,

00:53:30.300 --> 00:53:31.513
they're greener earlier.

00:53:34.240 --> 00:53:35.773
Then Deborah, Debbie.

00:53:36.630 --> 00:53:39.690
Just the ones that kind
of sidle up next to me

00:53:39.690 --> 00:53:41.249
and wanna hang out and be social.

00:53:41.249 --> 00:53:42.230
- Girlfriend and Debbie.

00:53:42.230 --> 00:53:44.083
- And then the bulls have names.

00:53:47.970 --> 00:53:52.020
If you can increase the
infiltration rate of soil,

00:53:52.020 --> 00:53:54.270
even just a small amount,

00:53:54.270 --> 00:53:56.360
but that small amount is multiplied

00:53:56.360 --> 00:53:57.950
across thousands of acres,

00:53:57.950 --> 00:54:00.330
watershed to watershed to watershed,

00:54:00.330 --> 00:54:02.893
across the whole state,
across the whole country,

00:54:04.620 --> 00:54:07.166
the impact is unprecedented.

00:54:29.630 --> 00:54:33.430
- When Western society
first came to this land,

00:54:33.430 --> 00:54:35.070
instead of coming here and telling us

00:54:35.070 --> 00:54:37.171
how we should be living,

00:54:37.171 --> 00:54:42.027
what if they had come and said,

00:54:42.027 --> 00:54:45.020
"Teach us how you survive on this land,"

00:54:45.020 --> 00:54:47.090
"and we're willing to listen."

00:54:47.090 --> 00:54:49.040
How would things be more different now?

00:54:53.383 --> 00:54:55.000
- If we had come in that way

00:54:55.000 --> 00:54:58.070
to settle on this Turtle Island,

00:54:58.070 --> 00:55:00.440
our relations with first nation peoples

00:55:00.440 --> 00:55:02.230
would be very different.

00:55:02.230 --> 00:55:06.172
We would have continued to learn from them

00:55:06.172 --> 00:55:09.400
and not have been in such conflict

00:55:09.400 --> 00:55:11.960
with their culture and way of life.

00:55:11.960 --> 00:55:15.870
And instead, we named it savage,

00:55:15.870 --> 00:55:20.870
we named it worthless, and we
pursued a path of genocide.

00:55:23.010 --> 00:55:26.993
So it's never too late to bear witness.

00:55:27.970 --> 00:55:31.690
- They gathered up all the
Indians in this valley in 1863,

00:55:31.690 --> 00:55:35.003
force-marched them down south
of Bakersfield, Fort Tejon,

00:55:36.179 --> 00:55:38.190
to get rid of everybody.

00:55:38.190 --> 00:55:39.580
But look, we're still here,

00:55:39.580 --> 00:55:41.800
and that's how important this valley is.

00:55:41.800 --> 00:55:44.650
My grandmother, at a
very young age, actually,

00:55:44.650 --> 00:55:47.080
she was marched all the way to Fort Tejon.

00:55:47.080 --> 00:55:49.640
She escaped from there, and everybody else

00:55:49.640 --> 00:55:51.420
she escaped with got caught.

00:55:51.420 --> 00:55:54.070
She got all the way back
up here to this valley

00:55:54.070 --> 00:55:56.693
all by herself as a young girl.

00:56:00.759 --> 00:56:04.580
- And so Paiutes were
naked, they were shoeless.

00:56:04.580 --> 00:56:07.000
No water, no food.

00:56:07.000 --> 00:56:10.540
They marched them south of
Independence to Lone Pine,

00:56:10.540 --> 00:56:12.500
and so when a lot of
the women and children

00:56:12.500 --> 00:56:16.730
got to Owens Lake, they
tried to get away and swim.

00:56:16.730 --> 00:56:19.230
And so now imagine you have...

00:56:19.230 --> 00:56:23.429
One of the stories is
there's 100 military people,

00:56:23.429 --> 00:56:26.400
soldiers, with the
repeating rifles shooting

00:56:26.400 --> 00:56:29.300
men, women and children in the lake.

00:56:29.300 --> 00:56:33.838
And so a lot of women and
children perished there.

00:57:10.210 --> 00:57:14.790
- I was watching the trains coming

00:57:14.790 --> 00:57:18.790
just filled with these oil tankers,

00:57:18.790 --> 00:57:21.210
and all these building materials,

00:57:21.210 --> 00:57:23.000
this wood and everything.

00:57:23.000 --> 00:57:25.847
And there's a way today,
it's like, "Oh, man."

00:57:27.114 --> 00:57:29.120
"Do we need more of this?"

00:57:29.120 --> 00:57:31.512
But as I put myself back like 100 years,

00:57:31.512 --> 00:57:35.731
there's this sense of, "Wow!"

00:57:35.731 --> 00:57:38.450
The awe that I would
have felt 100 years ago,

00:57:38.450 --> 00:57:40.970
with like, "Man, we are building America."

00:57:40.970 --> 00:57:44.080
"We're creating new possibilities,"

00:57:44.080 --> 00:57:48.380
"and we're growing into a great nation,"

00:57:48.380 --> 00:57:50.023
and just this whole thing.

00:57:52.880 --> 00:57:55.033
We, as humans,

00:57:56.040 --> 00:58:00.350
can begin new intentions and

00:58:02.050 --> 00:58:07.050
create the possibility
of enough water for all.

00:58:14.010 --> 00:58:16.180
- There's a tender
excitement when imagining

00:58:16.180 --> 00:58:17.883
what's possible moving forward.

00:58:19.280 --> 00:58:22.570
If we designed our lives
around water differently,

00:58:22.570 --> 00:58:24.830
what could this earth look like?

00:58:24.830 --> 00:58:26.430
What could our cities look like?

00:58:27.730 --> 00:58:30.830
LA and its relationship
to the Owens Valley

00:58:30.830 --> 00:58:32.790
is something of a bellwether

00:58:32.790 --> 00:58:34.790
for the kind of changes that are needed.

00:58:36.560 --> 00:58:38.210
- This water that's flowing through here

00:58:38.210 --> 00:58:41.607
is the Owens River, the Sacramento River

00:58:41.607 --> 00:58:42.900
and the Colorado River.

00:58:42.900 --> 00:58:44.700
Each one of these rivers extended

00:58:44.700 --> 00:58:47.063
hundreds of miles into Las Angeles.

00:58:47.960 --> 00:58:51.763
And it's really ironic and painful,

00:58:52.600 --> 00:58:56.517
when we have enough water
but we throw it away.

00:59:02.853 --> 00:59:06.470
What does a forest ecosystem,
a forest watershed do,

00:59:06.470 --> 00:59:10.373
and how can we overlay that
onto a city, to fix a city fast?

00:59:15.460 --> 00:59:18.400
That very large oak tree,
the soil underneath it

00:59:18.400 --> 00:59:21.470
is like a tank and a sponge,
and a treatment plant.

00:59:21.470 --> 00:59:25.080
So the tree has grown
for several hundred years

00:59:25.080 --> 00:59:26.320
and it's been building soil,

00:59:26.320 --> 00:59:29.663
and that soil is habitat
for all kinds of critters,

00:59:30.610 --> 00:59:33.843
microscopic organisms, fungi, worms.

00:59:35.400 --> 00:59:37.010
And then larger and larger critters

00:59:37.010 --> 00:59:38.803
that dig and drill, rodents,

00:59:39.940 --> 00:59:44.940
and it makes a big sponge
that captures and holds water.

00:59:46.100 --> 00:59:48.880
And within a couple feet,
that water is clean,

00:59:48.880 --> 00:59:50.770
and then it's sent to recharge

00:59:50.770 --> 00:59:53.303
all of our ground water, aquifers.

00:59:59.510 --> 01:00:01.310
With trees capturing, cleaning water,

01:00:01.310 --> 01:00:04.220
putting it in the ground,
preventing floods, holding soil,

01:00:04.220 --> 01:00:06.220
we lost all that when we built the city.

01:00:07.210 --> 01:00:10.930
We go again to Australia, Melbourne,

01:00:10.930 --> 01:00:13.760
they did the science,
did the math and realized

01:00:13.760 --> 01:00:17.350
they needed to double their
tree canopy cover from 20%,

01:00:17.350 --> 01:00:19.543
just like Los Angeles has today, to 40.

01:00:20.876 --> 01:00:23.810
We all need to be thinking
about catching, capturing,

01:00:23.810 --> 01:00:26.860
because when we catch it, we
recharge the water in the soil.

01:00:26.860 --> 01:00:29.810
That water goes and
recharges our aquifers.

01:00:29.810 --> 01:00:32.110
When that happens, our
streams come back to life,

01:00:32.110 --> 01:00:33.583
even city streams.

01:00:35.370 --> 01:00:37.840
- We planted all these trees!

01:00:37.840 --> 01:00:38.673
Seven miles,

01:00:39.810 --> 01:00:41.960
three hours, 3,000 people.

01:00:41.960 --> 01:00:43.810
We crowdsourced.

01:00:43.810 --> 01:00:46.970
This is the largest living
monument in the world

01:00:46.970 --> 01:00:48.623
to Dr. Martin Luther King.

01:00:49.500 --> 01:00:51.667
You can see it from space.

01:01:06.550 --> 01:01:09.370
- This is a really good place to contrast

01:01:09.370 --> 01:01:11.383
current with what's soon to be.

01:01:12.240 --> 01:01:15.920
Notice how wet the ground is,
how much water was wasted.

01:01:15.920 --> 01:01:18.040
And it's just either
carried pollutants away,

01:01:18.040 --> 01:01:19.520
or it's now evaporating.

01:01:19.520 --> 01:01:23.626
Here the water is captured so elegantly,

01:01:23.626 --> 01:01:26.280
there's no waste and overspray.

01:01:26.280 --> 01:01:29.900
It's being water directly to the soil,

01:01:29.900 --> 01:01:32.003
directly to the roots and the aquifer.

01:01:33.568 --> 01:01:37.010
Where we don't have enough
space for enough capture

01:01:37.010 --> 01:01:40.630
in trees and soil, we have tanks.

01:01:40.630 --> 01:01:45.630
This is a thimble, a tiny,
tiny thimble, a rain barrel.

01:01:47.136 --> 01:01:50.120
But our vision is to have large tanks,

01:01:50.120 --> 01:01:52.630
1,000 gallons, 5,000 gallons,

01:01:52.630 --> 01:01:54.421
10,000 gallons per house.

01:01:56.685 --> 01:01:58.580
- We're gonna go out front, okay?

01:01:58.580 --> 01:01:59.736
- Yeah.

01:01:59.736 --> 01:02:01.165
- I wanna go.

01:02:01.165 --> 01:02:01.998
- Okay.

01:02:02.934 --> 01:02:03.767
Do you have my phone?

01:02:03.767 --> 01:02:05.100
- Yeah.
- Oh.

01:02:05.100 --> 01:02:06.960
- It cuts off the water here,

01:02:06.960 --> 01:02:09.530
and it starts to flow into the cisterns.

01:02:09.530 --> 01:02:11.905
Up here is a bug catcher,

01:02:11.905 --> 01:02:14.530
and it catches all the
sediment and makes sure

01:02:14.530 --> 01:02:19.530
that no pest or anything,
bugs, get into the system.

01:02:20.040 --> 01:02:22.173
Comes down and,

01:02:23.770 --> 01:02:27.151
travels from there and
into these cisterns.

01:02:27.151 --> 01:02:31.520
They fill up at the same time.

01:02:31.520 --> 01:02:34.970
So they're always at the same level.

01:02:34.970 --> 01:02:36.730
So this level here lets us know

01:02:36.730 --> 01:02:38.280
how much water is in there now.

01:02:39.702 --> 01:02:41.105
I was surprised.

01:02:43.130 --> 01:02:47.350
I didn't think that these
cisterns would ever fill up.

01:02:47.350 --> 01:02:49.020
They're huge.

01:02:49.020 --> 01:02:52.920
But, I also underestimated how much water

01:02:52.920 --> 01:02:54.562
was coming off of my roof.

01:02:58.040 --> 01:03:02.311
- LA doesn't get a whole lot
of rain, but when we get rain,

01:03:02.311 --> 01:03:05.450
it's like it's shooting down.

01:03:05.450 --> 01:03:08.870
And, I mean, it just comes down
and these things overflowed.

01:03:08.870 --> 01:03:12.250
So they hold, well,

01:03:12.250 --> 01:03:15.220
865 gallons a piece.

01:03:15.220 --> 01:03:17.673
So I had 16,

01:03:18.708 --> 01:03:23.708
1,700+ gallons, plus whatever overflowed.

01:03:26.650 --> 01:03:28.390
Now I know what to look forward to

01:03:28.390 --> 01:03:31.280
when we get big rains,
and what to prep for,

01:03:31.280 --> 01:03:32.340
and just start...

01:03:32.340 --> 01:03:33.976
Maybe I should start planting more plants

01:03:33.976 --> 01:03:35.976
so I can use more water.

01:03:41.590 --> 01:03:44.280
- I could foresee a situation in which

01:03:45.760 --> 01:03:49.900
the whole city was sort of
smartly networked together,

01:03:49.900 --> 01:03:51.830
rainwater harvesting.

01:03:51.830 --> 01:03:55.573
Where when it sees the giant storm coming,

01:03:57.160 --> 01:03:59.660
24-hours out, opens the valve

01:03:59.660 --> 01:04:03.060
at the bottom of
everybody's rainwater tank,

01:04:03.060 --> 01:04:06.763
so each tank would have
its overflow basin.

01:04:08.641 --> 01:04:13.600
So that band of the storm
passes, valve opens,

01:04:13.600 --> 01:04:15.870
smartly networked through the whole city,

01:04:15.870 --> 01:04:18.570
it drains the thing into the soil,

01:04:18.570 --> 01:04:21.153
then it catches the next surge.

01:04:44.727 --> 01:04:47.850
- For decades, they've been
mining gravel to make concrete

01:04:47.850 --> 01:04:49.067
for freeways and stuff like that,

01:04:49.067 --> 01:04:51.217
and it's left this huge
hole in the ground.

01:04:56.080 --> 01:04:58.470
- The city and the County of Los Angeles

01:04:58.470 --> 01:05:00.779
have combined together
to purchase this land

01:05:00.779 --> 01:05:03.026
from the gravel operator,

01:05:03.026 --> 01:05:06.930
and it will become a beautiful lake

01:05:08.170 --> 01:05:10.730
and treatment wetland.

01:05:10.730 --> 01:05:14.210
So it's gonna take all
the bulk of the floodwater

01:05:14.210 --> 01:05:17.040
from a couple miles north.

01:05:17.040 --> 01:05:19.620
The massive flow of floodwater,

01:05:19.620 --> 01:05:21.780
all of this will go
straight to the aquifer,

01:05:21.780 --> 01:05:24.253
recharging and rebuilding
LA's water supply.

01:05:25.789 --> 01:05:29.650
This will be a beautiful
park and lake, tall trees,

01:05:29.650 --> 01:05:32.093
places for people to play and be.

01:05:34.540 --> 01:05:37.760
- A flood is simply the result

01:05:37.760 --> 01:05:42.160
of having more water appear
within a given location

01:05:42.160 --> 01:05:43.973
than can be absorbed by the ground.

01:05:44.810 --> 01:05:47.910
So if you have areas that are hard pan,

01:05:47.910 --> 01:05:49.849
you have areas that are paved over,

01:05:49.849 --> 01:05:52.560
then the water that falls is
simply gonna hit the ground

01:05:52.560 --> 01:05:53.510
and it's gonna run.

01:05:54.430 --> 01:05:55.530
- Whenever it rained,

01:05:55.530 --> 01:05:57.460
this street would be completely flooded.

01:05:57.460 --> 01:05:59.467
People couldn't get out of their homes,

01:05:59.467 --> 01:06:02.610
kids couldn't get to school.

01:06:02.610 --> 01:06:07.610
This tree was removed,
major deep trench dug,

01:06:07.910 --> 01:06:11.570
and two gigantic trench drains,

01:06:11.570 --> 01:06:13.570
or French drains were put in.

01:06:13.570 --> 01:06:18.570
These are big pipes,
perforated, so holes throughout.

01:06:18.750 --> 01:06:21.730
And that's taking the
bulk of the floodwater

01:06:21.730 --> 01:06:24.240
that's running off of
everyone else's house

01:06:24.240 --> 01:06:27.440
and put it underground into the pipe

01:06:27.440 --> 01:06:32.440
in a catch basin that's in
the street by that gray car.

01:06:32.620 --> 01:06:35.010
All of that goes through
a filtration system,

01:06:35.010 --> 01:06:37.440
is put in the pipe,
and the water is stored

01:06:37.440 --> 01:06:40.540
and slowly seeps into the ground,

01:06:40.540 --> 01:06:45.540
biomimicking the tree, once
again, but extended underground.

01:06:45.640 --> 01:06:46.840
- First of all, we capture as much

01:06:46.840 --> 01:06:50.000
and keep it on the property
so it doesn't run off.

01:06:50.000 --> 01:06:52.260
Keep as much of that water as possible.

01:06:52.260 --> 01:06:55.100
That then overflows into the street,

01:06:55.100 --> 01:06:57.600
is captured from the street in a curb cut.

01:06:57.600 --> 01:06:59.480
That green strip called the parkway

01:07:00.440 --> 01:07:02.840
is retrofitted to be like a creek.

01:07:02.840 --> 01:07:05.280
So the water can flow in through a drain,

01:07:05.280 --> 01:07:10.060
flows along a meandering swale,
a creek-shaped structure,

01:07:10.060 --> 01:07:13.530
but it's lined and loaded
with plants and mulch.

01:07:13.530 --> 01:07:16.990
- This basin's totally full, love it.

01:07:16.990 --> 01:07:19.730
Next, totally full.

01:07:19.730 --> 01:07:21.600
Then it continues down, and
then the neighbor down there's

01:07:21.600 --> 01:07:23.360
got a whole bunch of basin.

01:07:23.360 --> 01:07:26.260
- All of that returns
water to our water supply,

01:07:26.260 --> 01:07:29.910
our ground water, and that's vital,

01:07:29.910 --> 01:07:34.220
because that will be a big part
of our ongoing water supply.

01:07:34.220 --> 01:07:38.820
It allows us to be taking
less water from other regions

01:07:38.820 --> 01:07:42.450
so more water can stay in
the Owens Valley, especially.

01:07:42.450 --> 01:07:44.950
Pull it back from being
the desert that it wasn't.

01:07:56.100 --> 01:07:57.183
- And we're on!

01:08:01.643 --> 01:08:04.230
- What if we run diagonal
across the road now?

01:08:04.230 --> 01:08:05.830
- Yeah, there we go.

01:08:05.830 --> 01:08:08.353
- Yeah, she's been walking
with us for a while.

01:08:10.490 --> 01:08:11.615
- Since the mountains?

01:08:11.615 --> 01:08:15.448
- That's incredible.
- Since a few blocks back.

01:08:26.308 --> 01:08:29.740
- We walked the last three weeks.

01:08:29.740 --> 01:08:32.610
200 miles, and tomorrow is our last day.

01:08:32.610 --> 01:08:34.887
- Oh, good for you guys.
- Yeah.

01:08:34.887 --> 01:08:37.440
And we're walking over
three years all the way

01:08:37.440 --> 01:08:40.360
from the headwaters above Mono Lake,

01:08:40.360 --> 01:08:42.320
and next year we'll be walking through LA

01:08:42.320 --> 01:08:44.737
for three weeks to the ocean.

01:09:38.028 --> 01:09:42.309
- If you're able to walk
out of here tomorrow.

01:09:42.309 --> 01:09:44.142
What do you walk with?

01:09:55.827 --> 01:10:00.752
♪ Time is gonna kill me ♪

01:10:00.752 --> 01:10:05.752
♪ Well, at least that's what they say ♪

01:10:06.665 --> 01:10:11.665
♪ I heard it by the fire ♪

01:10:12.408 --> 01:10:17.408
♪ And there was nothing more to say ♪

01:10:18.299 --> 01:10:21.144
♪ Well, I ain't ever ♪

01:10:21.144 --> 01:10:24.020
♪ Met a river ♪

01:10:24.020 --> 01:10:26.918
♪ Gone and treat it ♪

01:10:26.918 --> 01:10:30.676
♪ This way ♪

01:10:30.676 --> 01:10:32.810
♪ All ♪

01:10:32.810 --> 01:10:35.668
♪ Of you people ♪

01:10:35.668 --> 01:10:38.130
♪ Won't ever be... ♪

01:10:38.130 --> 01:10:39.640
- So it was pretty incredible

01:10:39.640 --> 01:10:41.480
to watch all the snow come down

01:10:41.480 --> 01:10:46.200
and to just not be anticipating
this amount of snowfall

01:10:46.200 --> 01:10:48.420
to happen during this year.

01:10:48.420 --> 01:10:52.310
And for it to all come in
those moments in January.

01:10:54.200 --> 01:10:57.430
And it's no longer flowing, but-

01:10:57.430 --> 01:10:59.330
- So this was cranking at one point?

01:10:59.330 --> 01:11:00.163
- Oh yeah.

01:11:00.163 --> 01:11:03.170
It was cranking, it was cranking.

01:11:03.170 --> 01:11:05.720
You can definitely see that
there was a lot of water

01:11:05.720 --> 01:11:06.983
that went through this.

01:11:11.220 --> 01:11:14.090
- And so the water will naturally flow

01:11:14.090 --> 01:11:16.830
into the terminus is Owens Lake.

01:11:16.830 --> 01:11:19.895
And so that's where water wants to go,

01:11:19.895 --> 01:11:21.820
is down into the lake.

01:11:21.820 --> 01:11:24.720
And the lake is, I believe,
calling to the water

01:11:24.720 --> 01:11:26.240
and saying, "Come."

01:11:26.240 --> 01:11:29.630
And all the life

01:11:29.630 --> 01:11:33.380
that wants to erupt from
the creation, again,

01:11:33.380 --> 01:11:36.430
of this lake is saying,
"Come and be a part."

01:11:36.430 --> 01:11:39.627
"We're ready to restore this place."

01:11:40.860 --> 01:11:42.423
And in the midst of that,

01:11:44.360 --> 01:11:45.703
LA says, "no."

01:11:47.030 --> 01:11:48.700
"This will not become a lake."

01:11:48.700 --> 01:11:52.070
"In fact, we're gonna
put this line across"

01:11:52.070 --> 01:11:55.380
"to stop any water from getting there."

01:11:55.380 --> 01:12:00.050
And so they put up these
berms to direct water

01:12:00.050 --> 01:12:02.230
away from this lake,

01:12:02.230 --> 01:12:05.830
because they wanna protect
their infrastructure.

01:12:05.830 --> 01:12:08.790
The moment we believe we control nature

01:12:08.790 --> 01:12:11.573
is the moment that nature
begins to control us.

01:12:12.430 --> 01:12:16.180
In a very physical way,
in a threatening way.

01:12:24.260 --> 01:12:26.963
- From a distance and through fences,

01:12:28.000 --> 01:12:30.363
we greeted the cascades
at the end of our walk.

01:12:32.430 --> 01:12:36.180
I remember feeling a profound
relief to have arrived there,

01:12:36.180 --> 01:12:38.760
and I wondered what it
was like for the water

01:12:38.760 --> 01:12:39.943
to meet the sun again.

01:12:41.290 --> 01:12:45.293
If it longed for soil and
stone, or roots and critters.

01:12:46.990 --> 01:12:49.100
In that culminating moment,

01:12:49.100 --> 01:12:52.320
it felt natural to envision
a humanity that's wise,

01:12:52.320 --> 01:12:54.463
sensitive, and willing to heal.

01:12:55.890 --> 01:12:57.640
And I like to think of this film

01:12:58.490 --> 01:13:00.053
as an offering to that dream.

01:13:05.910 --> 01:13:08.763
- Unity is unavoidable.

01:13:10.320 --> 01:13:13.390
We're realizing that we're
all in this together,

01:13:13.390 --> 01:13:16.630
especially as we watch the
climate start to deteriorate,

01:13:16.630 --> 01:13:19.967
and we realize that we
all play our part in that,

01:13:19.967 --> 01:13:24.430
and that we all live on planet Earth.

01:13:24.430 --> 01:13:27.600
And there's this thin veil of atmosphere

01:13:27.600 --> 01:13:30.310
that keeps us from
getting blasted by the sun

01:13:30.310 --> 01:13:32.643
and frozen by the winds of space.

01:13:36.870 --> 01:13:38.083
We gotta work together.

01:13:39.480 --> 01:13:42.910
If we're in the anthropocene
and we're making

01:13:42.910 --> 01:13:45.840
more change on this planet
than any other species,

01:13:45.840 --> 01:13:47.830
we gotta be self-aware

01:13:47.830 --> 01:13:49.730
and we gotta check each other and say,

01:13:51.250 --> 01:13:54.323
"is what we're doing good
for everyone and everything?"

01:13:57.358 --> 01:13:59.278
And water is at the heart of that.

01:14:04.360 --> 01:14:07.810
- We are part of a huge history.

01:14:07.810 --> 01:14:11.033
And as humans at this
time, we're a tiny spec.

01:14:13.240 --> 01:14:17.090
And as that, if we can
head, like on a sailboat,

01:14:17.090 --> 01:14:20.870
a trim tab, just be
part of turning the boat

01:14:20.870 --> 01:14:25.870
in the best direction possible
for all life to continue,

01:14:27.420 --> 01:14:30.093
I will go out of here with gratitude.

01:14:35.910 --> 01:14:37.060
- Hope springs eternal.

01:14:38.680 --> 01:14:40.903
And I'm not talking like that,

01:14:42.960 --> 01:14:44.833
that fake hope dope.

01:14:46.720 --> 01:14:51.030
You know I think, as long
as, my attitude is...

01:14:52.340 --> 01:14:54.803
As long as we're waking up in the morning,

01:14:56.210 --> 01:14:58.200
it's another day to get it right.

01:14:58.200 --> 01:14:59.950
You got another day.

01:14:59.950 --> 01:15:01.650
You got another opportunity.

01:15:15.829 --> 01:15:20.758
♪ Flow freely when you need me ♪

01:15:20.758 --> 01:15:25.758
♪ Swift upon your way to meet me ♪

01:15:27.513 --> 01:15:32.513
♪ Let go, you rise to greet me ♪

01:15:32.701 --> 01:15:37.129
♪ Bring me back to life ♪

01:15:37.129 --> 01:15:38.923
♪ Oh ♪

01:15:38.923 --> 01:15:41.041
♪ Time ♪

01:15:41.041 --> 01:15:43.451
♪ Flows on ♪

01:15:43.451 --> 01:15:47.023
♪ On and on ♪

01:15:47.023 --> 01:15:51.498
♪ And on ♪

01:15:51.498 --> 01:15:56.498
♪ Flow freely when you see me ♪

01:15:57.025 --> 01:16:02.025
♪ Lift me from the road beneath me ♪

01:16:03.472 --> 01:16:08.472
♪ Let go, you hide to seek me ♪

01:16:08.930 --> 01:16:13.235
♪ Under open skies ♪

01:16:13.235 --> 01:16:15.124
♪ Oh ♪

01:16:15.124 --> 01:16:17.150
♪ Time ♪

01:16:17.150 --> 01:16:18.527
♪ Flows on ♪

01:16:18.527 --> 01:16:19.968
♪ And on, and on, and on ♪

01:16:19.968 --> 01:16:23.276
♪ And on ♪

01:16:23.276 --> 01:16:25.717
♪ And on ♪

01:16:25.717 --> 01:16:29.217
♪ Whoa ♪

01:16:50.737 --> 01:16:53.190
♪ And the tide ♪

01:16:53.190 --> 01:16:56.121
♪ Goes on ♪

01:16:56.121 --> 01:16:58.971
♪ And on ♪

01:16:58.971 --> 01:17:02.130
♪ And on ♪

01:17:02.130 --> 01:17:07.130
♪ And the tide goes on ♪

01:17:07.942 --> 01:17:12.942
♪ And on, and on ♪

01:17:14.692 --> 01:17:15.623
♪ And the tide ♪

01:17:15.623 --> 01:17:16.834
♪ And the tide ♪

01:17:16.834 --> 01:17:18.404
♪ Goes on ♪

01:17:18.404 --> 01:17:23.404
♪ And on, and on ♪

01:17:26.542 --> 01:17:31.542
♪ And the tide goes on and on and on ♪

01:17:32.280 --> 01:17:37.280
♪ And on, and on, and on ♪