Tucson Mayor not running for re-election

[WilmaWildcat]

Originally Posted by Roli

...It's due to work of a huge team of active and involved local residents some with hydrology degrees and lots with shovels and muscles. Kudos to those young men and women for restoring our landscape. The Rillito was lined with Cottonwoods at River and Craycroft in the sixties. Some of you never saw the real beauty of this place, and we can get that beauty back...

Tried to thumb-up your post, but already a big fan of your posts, they say. Did not live in Tucson in the 1960's, but heard about the cottonwoods back in the '80s already. Would love to see that. I think I may have seen pix of them in vintage Arizona Highways issues. Ray Manley and Esther Henderson published a lot of Tucson pix in Arizona Highways. (We have like 700 issues; they have their own room.)

[Roli]

Thanks Wilma! I can't up vote your posts anymore for the same reason. City-data thinks we're a mutual admiration society, I guess. I remember one enormous cottonwood right near Craycroft and River. I think I saw a hawk in it as a kid. There were more mesquites on the banks, also. We all played in the arroyos constantly, which was so dangerous, but we wanted to catch the tadpoles which were everywhere in puddles in the monsoon season. We dug forts in the banks of the arroyos and had wars. Another terrible idea!!

The county and the mayor have been helping to restore our many streams and rivers. Yes, we had flowing water in all the rivers for most of the year only a few generations ago! If you go on the Watershed Management site, you can click on maps and see all the watersheds around Tucson. I've learned a lot there. The site has lots of data and opportunities to work on the projects if you are in good shape and ready to use a shovel on weekends. Or you can donate time or cash. They are especially interested in slowing the water high up first. The water is a trickle there, so you can slow it more and spread it. That means starting in the foothills. They have helped people build tanks to collect rainwater and shut off their private wells. The water table is rising steadily back to previous levels, but we have a lot more to do.

[tumamoc]

I like the idea of running streams in Tucson. The efforts of filtering wastewater through the area's two Pima County reclamation facilities (Agua Nueva and Tres Rios) back into the Santa Cruz River have already paid off because the endangered Gila topminnow has made its way back to the area. Tucson Water also does a great job of helping recharge the Tucson basin aquifer with CAP water in Avra Valley and at their reclaimed water treatment plant/wetlands project off of Sweetwater Drive.