Untitled Document

Picture 1:
View from the top of the watershed of the new ponding banks with the community in the background on the western side of Ernabella creek.

Picture 2:
View of the ponding banks further down the slope. Eight ponding banks were constructed as part of this project.

Picture 3:
View along one of the ponding banks after a storm which delivered 15 mm of rain in 10 minutes. The bank was large enough to contain this down pour of rain. The water collected in this bank would have normally gone to waste and not been retained to irrigate the trees and shrubs that had been planted along the ponding side of the bank. The principle is to collect small amounts of water from small catchment areas normally know as micro-catchments. The collection of large amounts of water needs to be avoided because this would require large catchment areas (macro-catchments) which are more difficult to revegetate. The process of revegetation begins in the ponding bank where the water is collected and gradually extends across the micro-catchment to the next ponding bank.

Picture 4:
The road down the slope in the middle of this picture has been broken into segments by the ponding banks. The silt flow into this ponding bank indicates the amount of water that roads and tracks are capable of collecting.

Picture 5:
View of a ponding bank with its spilling point in the foreground. When this bank was surveyed and pegged before construction, this point was 150 mm above the lowest point in the middle of the bank. The other end of the bank would have been about 230 mm above the lowest point. The ground surface was ripped first before pushing up the bank so the lose soil would bond into the original surface. Each bank consolidated to about 700 to 800 mm high.