Water, or the lack of it, is a generational issue. For residents of the San Luis Valley and the greater Rio Grande basin that extends from here to the Gulf of Mexico, water remains our worry, our economic driver, our source of life.
Alamosa Public library has seized the opportunity to teach about water’s importance and the journey it takes from the headwaters through an interactive topographical map, or topo table, of the Rio Grande’s headwaters and the San Luis Valley.
Now a permanent fixture of water education at the library — which sits just a few hundred feet from the banks of the Rio Grande — that educational opportunity can start at the childhood level.
“This will live here forever,” said We are Water program manager Tory Nau.
We Are Water, a program under CU Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES, started nearly six years ago with the idea of connecting communities around water, Nau said. With water being a scarce resource, especially in the Southwest, the project’s program managers wanted to create a shared space where people can come together to talk about water.
Nau said the approach is to bring diverse views into the fold. Bridging western science philosophy with indigenous and other cultural perspectives is at the core of the project’s philosophy.
“Hopefully,” Nau said, “so that people might understand where their water comes from, how it’s used and eventually hope for some action conserving water and just understanding one another and being able to have a positive, progressive conversation.”
We are Water has a traveling exhibit making the rounds around the Four Corners region. The four large, traveling pieces are currently in Durango. Through this exhibit, Nau said, supplemental funding was received for Alamosa’s project with the intent to co-design an exhibit with the community for the community.
Last spring that co-design team was put together with the intent of creating a permanent exhibit that discusses the Valley’s water. The extensive conversations centered on how to show where water comes from, then show how water is used and shared among local producers and users and among states.
“It took shape as a topo table,” Nau said.
The co-design team consisted of Alamosa Public Library Manager Maria Kramer, photographer Ryan Scavo, artist Jocelyn Catterson, Deputy General Manager for the Rio Grande Water Conservation District Amber Pacheco, and Director of ASU’s Salazar Rio Grande Del Norte Center Paul Formisano.
“Water is a very complex but unifying topic in the Valley,” said Nau.
Out of the conversations and at the intersection of art and education, the topo table was created. The four side panels were hand-painted by Catterson representing different waters and animals from the Valley.
The photographs that accompany the interactive buttons and wall were taken by Scavo.
The interactive buttons and lessons are in English and Spanish.
The group focused on nine key places where water flows from the headwaters. It was originally a longer list, but they worked to keep it engaging. Nau said, “We’re trying to have that next layer of educational content but continue to keep it interactive and multi-generational, as well.”
The topo map itself was 3D-printed by a group of two graduate and two undergraduate students at CU Boulder. It was designed by using Geographic Information System, or GIS, data. That data was then translated to software that allowed it to be 3D-printed as 16 eight-by-eight-inch squares that were then glued together and hand painted.
There was a “huge learning process” in the actual printing of the map. 3D-printing is a long process that uses filaments of different materials to assemble a three-dimensional object. Producing a piece can take a long time and can face a variety of hiccups and roadbumps, which Nau said affected the deadlines for the project.
Throughout the map are boundaries that are underlaid with blue LED lights so that when a visitor presses one of the buttons, the area or stretch of river lights up bright blue.
During the co-design process, Nau said, the team connected with local water experts and other organizations to look at the exhibit and make sure it was as accurate as possible and represented the reality of the water’s journey and uses. To get it just right, the team also had a water policy expert look at the exhibit to make sure that the language of the exhibit fit the language of the Rio Grande Compact.
“It was a really fun project of just bringing all these voices together,” she said, “and just hoping that it has impact we intended and people learn and ask questions and share stories and ultimately care about their water.”
