After winning The Permaculture Institute of North America (PINA) 2018 Design Contest, Tao Orion and Abel Kloster used the $5,000 award to build a strategically important and multifunctional pond at a permaculture site near Cottage Grove, Oregon. Learn more about this and other projects at PINA at https://pina.in .

Climate change and industrial forestry clear-cuts on neighboring land have led to ever more serious drought conditions at this environmental education center and sustainable forest management demonstration in the middle Willamette Valley. In 2017, participants at the Center's Advanced Permaculture Practicum on Water and Forestry laid out a plan for a Keyline forestry system that included the large pond at the top of the site its managers had long dreamed of creating. They realized it would be central to their long-term plan to rehydrate the entire catchment. Detailed surveying work demonstrated that the pond could be placed to maximize gravitational pressure (head) for fire mitigation. An overflow channel would carry water across the ridge to rehydrate one of the hottest and driest parts of the site, while also providing much-needed road access into the northeastern section of the property, extending the reach of their sustainable forestry operations into this remote area.

The water harvesting earthworks are now actively rehydrating the heavily impacted watershed. The new pond has increased water retention and extended stream flow later into the dry season, while improving access to the site's … managed forest tracts.