ZIA PUEBLO, N.M. — After years of drought and livestock grazing, a spring sacred to an American Indian tribe in north-central New Mexico has dried up, and now the concern is that erosion, climate change and the region’s growing demand for water will keep the spring from recovering.
So, Zia Pueblo, a restoration ecologist and a team of volunteers are doing some heavy lifting to get the spring flowing again.
They began working Saturday morning under cloudy skies and spitting rain — something the area hasn’t seen much of in a long time.
“Mother Nature and the spirit world are showering us with rain,” tribal administrator Peter Pino told the group as they gathered in a circle for a prayer. “I personally believe that when people are coming together for a good cause that these kinds of things happen. This is good weather.”
Pino, a few of his family members and about two dozen volunteers spent the day building several rock dams above the spring to catch runoff and sediment from the sandstone bluffs and clay hills above.
Native grass seeds were then raked in around the rocks.
The structures are designed to spur the growth of vegetation and recharge the soil with moisture instead of allowing it to run off and create deep ruts in the earth.
Steve Vrooman, an ecologist from Santa Fe who directed the volunteers, said the spring could return in a few years, depending on the amount of rainfall the area receives.
