Water and Soil - Project Planning and Management for Ecological Restoration - page 101

FIGURE 7-3. A storage and gravity distribution system provides water in the Colorado desert. A cattle
trough has been placed under a bridge abutment to provide gravitational head. The water travels through
PVC pipes to buried unglazed clay pots. (Photo by David A. Bainbridge.)
Box 7-2. Creative Solution: Low-Tech Irrigation System
A contractor was responsible for the design, installation, and maintenance of plant-
ings adjacent to a small lake. To save money, the contractor avoided installing an
elaborate irrigation system. However, the plantings required watering several times
through the summer of the first year. The contractor used a portable pump to pump
water from the lake to the plants. The contractor found that it took a very long time
to water each plant using a hose to distribute water to each planting basin. To reduce
the time required to water each plant (refilling the water basin more than once), the
contractor installed a five-gallon plastic bucket next to each plant with a small hole
at the bottom side of each bucket. The maintenance workers were able to rapidly fill
each bucket and minimize the time required to water each plant.